A housewife had a couple impersonate her parents and sign over the family home to her so she could pay off debts to a loanshark, the District Court heard yesterday.
Prosecutor Graham Goodman said Veronica Ling, 38, took a mainland couple to a lawyer's office in March last year, where the couple produced fake ID cards supplied by the loanshark.
The couple signed over general power of attorney to Ling, allowing her to re-mortgage her parents' Tin Hau home and raise $5.2 million.
Judge Richard Hawkes jailed Ling for two years, saying he accepted that she was remorseful.
'The scenario here is increasingly all too common in Hong Kong when offences are committed under the pressure of loansharks,' he said. Defence lawyer Joseph Pethes said Ling had begun drinking and gambling after her husband left her in 1995.
She had borrowed $600,000 from a loanshark called 'Ah Chun' to pay for her estranged husband's medical treatment and her gambling debts.