A swindling shopaholic jailed for 18 months in January has been given another 10 months behind bars for conning more than HK$1.2 million from a series of unsuspecting victims.

Sobbing along with her sister who was sitting in the public gallery, 32-year-old Yeung Mei-mei had pleaded guilty to 15 counts of fraud, one count of obtaining property by deception and one count of theft.

In his ruling, Deputy District Judge David Dufton sentenced Yeung to two years and four months, adjusted to 10 months since she had already served nearly 18 months for a prior conviction.

Calling Yeung "a classic con artist", Dufton added that 14 of the offenses she committed between April and December of 2008 were done while on police bail and were aggravating factors in his decision.

Suffering from impulse control disorder and passing herself off as a woman of vast means, Yeung befriended eight victims, frontline staff at various boutiques and top notch hotels, through generous tips and tricked them into giving up sums ranging from HK$51,520 to HK$244,320 each.

She told her marks that she was the daughter of families which owned various high-end watch stores or boutiques which were experiencing cash flow problems or were having trouble meeting sales quotas. She lured her victims with promises of employment, commission and high interest for the loans.

In mitigation, her defense counsel Eleanor Cheng said Yeung had repaid HK$392,300 of the more than HK$1.2 million, adding that Yeung's gains all went to paying off expensive hotel fees and she is now destitute.

Yeung was due to be released for an earlier conviction on 11 counts of fraud and 13 counts of obtaining property by deception in a few days, stemming from another series of frauds also committed in 2008 but targeting one particular household.

The scams were similar to her latest conviction, where Yeung duped her hairstylist's family of HK$251,000 as surety against a HK$4 million loan she was suppose to arrange but never did.

In all, she took HK$728,854 from the family which turned to the police after she was unable to pay up.

Among her spending sprees, Leung racked up HK$97,400 in costs from the Landmark Mandarin Oriental and HK$162,000 in Lane Crawford gift vouchers.

Yeung arrived in the city in 1988 from Fujian province and studied at Belilios Public School before pursuing a degree at the University of California Los Angeles in 1998 where she allegedly developed her compulsive buying disorder.

The court heard Yeung had taken to the self-destructive behavior to please her then-boyfriend with luxury gifts.

She filed for bankruptcy the same year she targeted the family after running up more than HK$6 million in debt.

China Daily

(HK Edition 12/30/2010 page1)