HKSAR v. WONG KAI WING

DCCC251/2012

IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

CRIMINAL CASE NO. 251 OF 2012

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Reasons for Sentence

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1.  Defendant, you have pleaded guilty to a total of 15 charges of fraud, contrary to section 16A of the Theft Ordinance, Cap.210, and one charge of evasion of liability by deception, contrary to section 18B(1)(b) of the Theft Ordinance, which is the 16th charge.

2.  The first 15 offences took place between 1 July 2011 and 22 August 2011, and involved you on behalf of your company, the Wai Wing Textiles Company Limited, producing to the victimised company, EOS Solutions Asia Limited, on different occasions forged documents in the form of 15 invoices, corresponding purchase orders and delivery notes which purported to relate to genuine deals between your company and customers of yours in order to obtain cash advances in pursuance of a factoring agreement between yourself and the victimised company.  The amount of cash that you managed to obtain from the victimised company by engaging in this deceit amounted to HK$2,366,983.98.

3.  With regard to the 16th charge, when the financial manager of the victimised company discovered that the scheduled payments in relation to the 15 invoices were in default and the sum of $2.6 million was outstanding, you, on 4 October 2011, issued a cheque in the sum of HK$500,000 in favour of the victimised company as part-payment of the debt but the cheque was dishonoured.

4.  You are 50 years of age, a family man and have a hitherto clear criminal record.

5.  I have read the letters of support written to me by some of your ex-employees.  They have a high regard for you and tell me that you are a very good boss, responsible, and passionate about your business. 

6.  You have clearly worked hard but have succumbed to the temptation of committing these offences to ease the cash flow problem in your business which you were reluctant to close down when the business became unprofitable.

7.  The amount of money that you cheated the victimised company out of was considerable, some $2.3 million, over a short period of time.

8.  In sentencing you I take into account all that has been said on your behalf, particularly your hitherto good character and plea of guilty to these offences, which is a reflection of your remorse. 

9.  I propose to adopt a global approach in terms of sentencing to reflect the criminality involved and the fact that all the offences were committed within a very short period of time.

10.  Clearly a custodial sentence is inevitable for serious offences such as these.

11.  On Charges 1 to 15, I adopt a starting point of 3½ years’ imprisonment.  I will discount this by one-third to reflect your plea of guilty to the charges, coming to 28 months’ imprisonment on Charges 1 to 15.  I order the sentences on these charges to run concurrently with each other.

12.  On Charge 16, I adopt a starting point of 2 years’ imprisonment.  Once again, I will discount that by one-third to reflect your plea, coming to 16 months’ imprisonment on Charge 16.  This sentence should normally be ordered to run consecutively to the sentences on Charges 1 to 15, but due to the question of totality of sentence, I order 8 months to run consecutively to the sentence on Charge 1 and the balance concurrently, arriving at a total sentence of 3 years’ imprisonment.