Ticket Scam Warning!
Tuesday 28 July 2020 9:09am
A “cunning” Brisbane serial conman who ripped off a dozen victims, including fans of Ed Sheeran and Bruno Mars by pretending to sell them concert tickets online, has not repaid a cent of his $200,000-plus frauds and probably never will, a court has heard.
Ho Man Stephen Yeung, 35, a former hospitality worker from Underwood, south of Brisbane, was today sentenced to five-and-a-half years jail by District Court Judge Craig Chowdhury.
But Yeung could be released soon because Judge Chowdhury set his parole eligibility date at today because Yeung has already spent nearly two years in prison on remand.
Yeung, a father of one who was born and raised in Hong Kong until the age of 11 when he attended St Laurence’s College in Brisbane, swindled a total of more than $200,000 from his victims between 2015 and 2018 including taking $2,100 from four music fans he found through classified websites.
He also swindled $157,768 from buy-now pay-later service Oxipay and about $50,000 from a Sydney man he met on an online car forum for enthusiasts of Lotus Elite cars.
The money went to feed his gambling addiction, the court heard.
In sentencing Yeung, Judge Chowdhury described Yeung’s actions as “persistent, deliberate and cunning frauds which left numerous people out of pocket”.
“There is no suggestion you have made any restitution to them, I expect you … probably never will,” Judge Chowdhury said.
He said Yeung’s actions of ripping off eager concert-goers he found on various classified websites in February 2018 by pretending to have tickets and tricking them into sending money for tickets he never sent were “really mean in nature”.
Judge Chowdhury said that Yeung showed “deviousness” in using the identity of a woman he met on the Chinese social media app WeChat to rip-off the seller of a $2,999 Apple MacBook laptop on Gumtree in June 2017.
Yeung was also sentenced for stealing $15,062 from his then-employer Mecca Bah in Fortitude Valley in June 2017, when he was a food and beverage supervisor, as well as buying a $1,241 Samsung Galaxy Tablet from Telstra using the identity of a man he met on a car enthusiasts website.
He also pleaded guilty to defrauding Oxipay of $157,768 by buying 182 items from Betta Home Living stores in Underwood, Toowoomba, Kingaroy and Cooma, NSW.
He also admitted hacking into the computers of Brisbane’s Kookaburra Showboat Cruises in January 2019 by deleting all users from their network and telling all customers their cruises had been cancelled.
Yeung has a history of similar crimes. In 2011 he was sentenced to three years prison for an $81,000 fraud which included “selling” items to people but never delivering them and using stolen credit card numbers to buy items online.
