Jail for cheating friend out of Mark Six win
A man who kept a friend's Mark Six lottery ticket and pocketed a HK$38,800 prize was jailed for six weeks yesterday.
Yu Tak-chak, 57, agreed to buy a ticket for his friend but ran off with the cash when the ticket won third prize.
Yu was earlier found guilty of theft after a trial at Tuen Mun Court for stealing the ticket on February 6, 2007. He had pleaded not guilty.
The Jockey Club's records showed that on the day of the offence, someone bought four tickets of six numbers, with one entry winning the third prize of HK$38,800, the court heard earlier. The next day, someone claimed the prize money.
The court had heard that Yu had gone to drink tea with two female friends. When they heard that he was heading to a betting office, they wrote down numbers for him to enter on their behalf. The next day the victim, who remembered all her numbers, found out that her prize had already been taken. She looked for Yu, but when she could not find him she made a report to the police.
Magistrate Douglas Kwok Kam-to found Yu guilty earlier this month, saying it was highly unlikely that the victim would be able to guess all the winning entries.
During the sentencing hearing yesterday, Kwok said that a background report showed Yu had felt no remorse. He handed Yu the six-week sentence saying there was no reason for him to give him any discount.
A lawyer representing Yu said a background report on the defendant was not very positive and that there was little he could use to speak in mitigation for him.
However, he said Yu had already spent time in custody on remand after his conviction, and that he had followed police bail conditions closely during the period when the crime was being investigated.
Yu did not have the financial ability to compensate the victim, the lawyer said. He lived on Comprehensive Social Security Assistance and giving just HK$500 per month would be a stretch.
