Men beaten and robbed in Hong Kong after trying to buy 92 tickets to Jacky Cheung concerts
- Mainland Chinese men arranged to meet woman outside Nam Cheong MTR station at 1am to pay HK$122,000 for tickets to Canto-pop star’s tour
- Gang of four masked men jumped them and beat them with iron rods
Two mainland Chinese men were beaten and robbed of HK$141,000 (US$17,978) in Hong Kong in the early hours of Wednesday after being lured to the city to buy tickets for concerts by Canto-pop star Jacky Cheung Hok-yau.
As of 12.30pm, police were still searching for a group of six – five men and one woman – in connection with the hold-up that took place outside Nam Cheong MTR station at 1.15am.
The two victims, aged 16 and 33, were put in contact with the woman through instant mobile messaging service WeChat and were offered 92 concert tickets for HK$122,000, according to police.
A meeting for the transaction was arranged outside the MTR station at about 1am on Wednesday.
“When the victims arrived, they were beaten with iron rods in an attack by four masked South Asian men and robbed of a rucksack carrying HK$141,000,” a police source said.
The perpetrators then fled in a getaway car driven by a Chinese man before police arrived. Police said the four South Asian men were wearing face masks at the time and the driver was thought to be aged between 20 and 30 and of thin build.
Officers scouted the area, but no arrests were made.
According to police, the 33-year-old victim suffered minor head and leg injuries and his 16-year-old friend had no obvious injuries. The pair did not need hospital treatment.
A police source believed the victims were lured to Hong Kong and robbed in an ambush.
Detectives from the Sham Shui Po criminal investigation unit were handling the case. So far, no one had been arrested.
Cheung’s 15-concert run “A Classic Tour – Finale Hong Kong” is on at the Hong Kong Coliseum in Hung Hom until January 29.
About 70,000 tickets for the performances had been sold out through Urbtix, according to its website.
The prices ranged from HK$380 to HK$980, but the 92 tickets the victims wanted to buy cost an average of HK$1,326 each.
The government has been under pressure to tackle scalping for tickets to pop music shows, which are often resold online at massively inflated prices.
Officials are mulling over personalised ticketing in which purchases would require a customer’s real name and their identity to be verified at the venue.
An outcry over scalping erupted in 2018 after tickets for several popular shows were snapped up quickly and resold for up to 20 times the original price, despite fans having queued for days in advance at box offices.
Counter sales for tickets to singer Andy Lau Tak-wah’s concerts had to be suspended in August following a knife attack in the queue. Fans were forced to buy tickets online or over the phone.
The incident happened about three weeks after another knife attack in which a 26-year-old man was injured while queuing to buy tickets for a concert by Singaporean singer JJ Lin.