A key member of a counterfeit credit card fraud syndicate, who surrendered himself to the ICAC after having absconded from court proceedings seven years ago, was today (Monday) jailed for four-and-a-half-year for bribing a former hotel night manager for o btaining customers' credit card data.

Cheung Hung, 30, had been wanted by the ICAC since 1993 after he failed to appear in court then.

Cheung was found guilty at District Court earlier this month on one count of, together with Li Yin-mei, offering not less than $29,000 to a former night manager of Conrad Hotel between June 1 1991 and May 26, 1992.

The bribe was for the manager to provide Cheung and Li with credit card information of guests of the hotel.

The court heard that Cheung and Li approached the manager in 1991 for his assistance in obtaining bona fide credit card data from hotel guests.

Cheung offered the manager $50 as a reward for each set of credit card data copied, and told him that such data would be used for manufacturing counterfeit credit cards.

The manager agreed to the plan. The court heard that he met Li every seven to ten days after he had copied about 50 sets of data, which he passed to Li during their meetings.

The manager received about $29,000 in total from Li as a reward, the court was told.

Li and Cheung were arrested by ICAC officers respectively in May and August in 1992, and were subsequently charged.

They were scheduled to appear in court in January 1993, but failed to turn up. Warrants were then issued for their arrests.

Cheung surrendered himself to the ICAC on December 12 last year. Li is still on the wanted list.

The manager, who admitted having accepted the bribe, was sentenced to three years' imprisonment in 1992.

The prosecution was today represented by Senior Government Counsel Johnny Chan, assisted by ICAC officer Nelson Lee.