Three victims lost more than HK$6.6 million after falling for an e-mail scam that promised them a financial windfall, a court heard yesterday.
District Court Deputy Judge Adriana Tse sentenced two young Indian men to 40 months in jail after they admitted taking part in handling the proceeds of the deception by opening two bank accounts in Hong Kong.
The court was told that HK$2.7 million remained in the accounts, while the two defendants had already gotten rid of HK$3.9 million.
Cousins Jain Nikhil and Jain Aman Kumar, both 20, pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to deal with property known or believed to be the proceeds of an indictable offence, and two counts of using false passports, presented to the Bank of Communications to open the accounts.
Prosecutor Vivien Chan Man-wai said Morton Scheinberg, 60, an American doctor working in Brazil, and Marie-Joele Majoie, 61, a French businesswoman working on the mainland, were separately contacted by strangers via e-mail last year and defrauded of millions.
They were told that they would receive huge inheritances from dead overseas relatives, Ms Chan said, adding that various legal fees had to be paid before they collected the money.
Between December and March this year, they remitted a total of more than HK$6 million to a Bank of Communications account in Hong Kong, opened by Jian Nikhil in September last year.