On 21 June 1981, a team of more than 10 ICAC investigators, armed with a search warrant, swooped on the CMB North Point depot. It was a Sunday and only a small number of workers were on duties. The investigators subsequently seized a huge quantity of coins and a number of layered underpants from the workers’ lockers.
A few days later, nearly 100 ICAC investigators were mobilised in a series of raids and arrested more than 30 suspects. During a search of a suspect’s residence, P.K. Ng recalled, a number of altered underpants and a large quantity of coins were found. He said: “ We flipped the mattress over and before our eyes were layers upon layers of coins piling on the plank of the bed, mostly $5 and $2 coins, totalling more than $100,000. We also found $70,000 worth of gold, believed to have been bought with the stolen money.”
In a separate raid, Hans Wong became suspicious of dozens of milk powder cans sitting at the corner. The suspect offered that the milk powder was for his infant son. Unconvinced, Hans flung them over and all were stashed with coins to the rim.
Danny Lo said: “What was more startling was the discovery of $500,000 worth of coins kept inside the safe at another suspect’s flat, roughly equivalent to 15 years’ of wages of an ordinary CMB worker.”
In August 1981, about two months after the ICAC raid on the bus depot, a CMB driver, his wife, two brothers and two brothers-in-law, and a gang member, had had a meeting with another CMB driver at a restaurant in North Point. The gang was hoping to lure the driver into joining their coin stealing conspiracy.
Hans Wong, an Assistant Investigator then, was meanwhile keeping an eye on a private car parked on Pak Fuk Road nearby. Suddenly, an order came out of his earphone: “The targets are about to leave the restaurant. Action.” “With no time to think, I immediately dashed across the road and held down the man in the driving seat. All around me were a lot of noise and swearing. The man I was arresting was quite sturdy and I found it difficult to handcuff him. I was in a dangerous situation as he could easily speed off and drag me along, or those in the back seat could assault me. But I thought of nothing at that juncture except to pin him down. Fortunately, my colleagues who had been staking out at the restaurant arrived in time to give me a hand. All in all, we arrested a total of seven persons from the car and in the vicinity.” As Hans Wong related to the incident some years ago, he quipped that it was admittedly somewhat daring, perhaps due to his greenness as an investigator.
Based on intelligence collected by the undercover drivers, the investigation team decided to stage a second operation in the night of 14 December 1981. The goal was to catch the thieves in the act.
The ICAC investigators were split into several action squads and waited for the preys. The team headed by P.K. Ng was assigned a target bus on its way back to the bus depot. The team intercepted the bus near Wing Hing Street and arrested the driver together with an accomplice about to flee the bus with the stolen coins.
Not far away, Hans Wong and his team closed in on a taxi waiting to pick up the man and the spoils. After identifying themselves, the ICAC officers immediately handcuffed the right hand of the cab driver to the steering wheel. Unexpectedly, he struggled and stepped on the paddle. Hans Wong said: “It was a scary moment. We tried from outside the cab all we could to stop him. We managed to subdue him only after much commotion. Only then did I realise that the taxi driver was the one whom I had arrested before. How dare he go on to commit the same offence while on bail.”
When things quietened down, Hans Wong was astounded to see a dozen of men crawling on top of one another just next to him. At the time Hans was making his move, P.K. Ng explained, “another team had managed to intercept another bus and was about to make the arrests when a dozen men suddenly jumped out to stop us. We thought they were of the same gang and got tangled up with them. Then we found these men got handguns on their sides; and they also noticed there were a few expatriates among us. We identified ourselves and they turned out to be a team of CID officers from a nearby police station on anti-crime patrol. They thought we were street fighting and tried to stop us. Finally, we uncovered from the suspects the marked coins that we had dropped into the fare boxes earlier in the day as passengers.”
Between 1980 and 1982, the ICAC cracked 11 cases involving CMB workers. Except for one relating to the acceptance of commission and another concerning the bribing of duty allocation staff, all other nine cases were related to bus fare theft.
These theft cases, though varied in minor details, all involved the manipulation of loopholes inherent in procedures laid down by the company management. All in all, a total of 68 persons were prosecuted, of whom 58 pleaded guilty, and another four were convicted. One was put under probation, and the remaining 61 were sentenced to imprisonment ranging from one to 20 months, though many had their sentences suspended.
| No. of persons charged | Successful prosecutions | |
| CMB employees | 46 persons | 45 persons |
| Former CMB employees | 8 persons | 8 persons |
| Security guards | 3 persons | 2 persons |
| Bank employees | 2 persons | 2 persons |
| Others (including housewives and grocery store owners) | 9 persons | 5 persons |
| Total | 68 persons | 62 persons |
The coin theft saga was exposed first through observation and surveillance, then followed by arrest and interviewing of the suspects, and seizure of hard evidence. Corruption investigation is always difficult, if not more so in this case. For example, during the search of the North Point bus depot, CMB management had assigned a lawyer to be present throughout. Even though ICAC officers had obtained a warrant and conducted their search operation strictly according to legal procedures, it still took them an inordinate amount of time to locate the altered underpants and the stolen coins.