THE QUEEN v. CHIM YEE-TUNG

BETWEEN

Coram: Sir Alan Huggins, V.-P., McMullin, V.-P. & Barker, J.A.

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JUDGMENT

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Sir Alan Huggins, V.-P. :

1. In this case the Applicant was charged on five charges of obtaining property by deception. The deception was that he told residents in Hong Kong that relatives of theirs had come illegally to Hong Kong and that money was required for their release. Fortunately one of the intended victims had the good sense to report this matter to the police. As a result a trap was laid and the Appellant was arrested. The last charge, however, relates to an offence after his arrest while he was on bail pending trial on the first few charges. The amounts of money involved totalled $30,500.00,of which the applicant actually received $17,500.00. The learned judge imposed sentences of three years' imprisonment concurrent on two of the charges of obtaining property by deception, three years on the attempted obtaining property by deception. Finally, for the obtaining property by deception when he was on bail he received an extra 1½ years' consecutive.

2. The Applicant says that he was merely collecting money for others and was not the mastermind. It was he who made the representations. It was he who obtained such money as was obtained. The learned judge appreciated that the Applicant had made a full and frank confession, and presumably accepted his assertion that he received only $3,500.00 for himself, but the Applicant had serious previous convictions and in our view the learned judge did not give sufficient weight to the factor that the final offence was committed while the Applicant was actually on bail for similar offences. This is a case where we think the sentence imposed did not sufficiently represent the seriousness of the offences. Accordingly we allow the appeal to the extent that we increase the sentence on the 5th charge from 1½ years' to 2½ years' consecutive.

22nd July 1983