Hong Kong man jailed for nearly 7 years for drug offences, using overdose victim’s identity card in bid to fool police
- Mok Chi-ho, 35, hid his true identity from police after reporting his boyfriend had fallen into a coma in hotel room where stash of drugs was found
- Mok, a serial offender, was wanted by police in connection with three criminal cases
A courier has been jailed for nearly seven years for drug offences and perverting the course of justice after he admitted switching his Hong Kong identity card with a man who died of an overdose in a hotel room to impede a police investigation into him.
The High Court heard Mok Chi-ho, 35, hid his true identity from police after reporting that his boyfriend was in coma in a room in the Emperor Hotel in Happy Valley, where a stash of drugs and apparatus for consumption were found on April 17, 2021.
The unconscious man, Chan Tsz-chung, was naked and confirmed dead by paramedics who rushed to the hotel.
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The accused at first claimed he was Chan by showing police the latter’s ID card, but officers found in an identity check two days later that his appearance did not match the photo shown on the ID card he had said was his.
The courier, when asked about the discrepancy, admitted he was Mok, who was wanted by police in connection with three other criminal cases.
Further inquiries revealed Mok and former salesman Andy Lam Chi-tak, 38, had met Chan and an unidentified man in the hotel room earlier that day for sex.
Mok said he believed Chan had by mistake swallowed an excessive amount of gamma-butyrolactone (GBL), a date rape drug, which killed him.
Officers later seized from Mok and Lam a wide variety of drugs, including more than 40 grams of Ice, 0.87 grams of Ecstasy and more than 5.7 litres of GBL, which was stored in three separate locations.
Mok on Friday pleaded guilty to trafficking in and possession of dangerous drugs, as well as perverting the course of justice. Lam admitted the same trafficking charge and a separate count of possession.
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Both defendants are no strangers to the courts. Mok notched up 20 convictions between 2003 and 2021.
Lam had six previous convictions and was last jailed in 2019 for trafficking in drugs.
Defence lawyers said the drugs found in their clients’ possession were for their own use, a submission accepted by deputy High Court judge Anthony Kwok Kai-on.
But Kwok said the case was made serious by the large amount of Ice involved and the potentially deadly consequences of using the drug and GBL together, as shown in Chan’s case.
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Kwok added that Mok’s attempt to obstruct police inquiries was doomed to fail.
“The attempt by [Mok] to conceal his identity was foolish to say the least, and was bound to be discovered by police in a matter of days,” the judge said.
He jailed each defendant for six years and four months for their drug offences.
Kwok sentenced Mok to an extra six months for misleading investigators, which brought his total sentence to six years and 10 months.
