A Filipino tourist has been jailed in a Hong Kong Court for two years after he was convicted on charges of theft and obtaining property by deception, Hong Kong News reports.
The High Court also junked Richard M. Atienza’s petition to reduce the jail sentence which involved stealing a credit card and using it on a shopping spree worth more than HK$27,000, after the victim, a male expat in the city, allegedly forced him to have oral sex.
Atienza was sentenced to two years in prison in the District Court on January 27 after he pleaded guilty to three charges of theft, eight charges of obtaining property by deception, and one charge of attempting to obtain property by deception.
High Court Justice Andrew Macrae said the defendant should have raised his allegations earlier, when he appeared before the District Court.
“There was no hint of such a story during the mitigation advanced by the applicant’s counsel in the (the District Court). On the contrary, his counsel explained that the applicant had acted opportunistically and out of greed when he saw that (the complainant) had dropped the credit card,” the justice said as he junked Atienza’s petition on May 17.
Atienza admitted to having met the victim in a park in Hong Kong in November 2014 and saw him drop the credit. While the duo left the park separately, Atienza returned and picked the card up. He later used the card to buy a pair of shoes, perfume, wristwatches, suitcases, game console, and cosmetics.
The judge said the defendant also attempted to use the same credit card to buy a mobile phone. However, the sales staff refused to give him the merchandise after realizing he was not the cardholder.
The victim later told the police that he was informed by HSBC that his card had been used in ‘suspicious transactions’ that day. He said he had no knowledge about these transactions since he had last used the card on November 12, 2014.
“After the case was reported to the police, the investigation of a sales slip involved in one of the suspicious transactions revealed the applicant’s fingerprint. As a result, the applicant was arrested on October 13, 2015 as he was re-entering Hong Kong,” Justice Macrae said.
Atienza was arrested by police as he tried to re-enter Hong Kong.