A bar manager today was sentenced to eight months behind bars for offering customers what she described as drinks coupons, but what might be more accurately described as coupons permitting patrons to grope the bar staff.
Prior to today’s sentencing, Yim Wai-han, 47, had been found guilty on five counts of managing a vice establishment at the Kowloon City Magistrates’ Court.
According to HK01, she was arrested in a sting at a bar on Austin Road in Tsim Sha Tsui following an apparently very thorough investigation that lasted from May 6 to June 22. Undercover cops posing as customers visited the bar five times during that period — probably just to be really, really sure of the presence of criminal activity.
On the first visit, two undercover cops went to the bar, where Yim asked them if they would like two Thai girls to keep them company and play games with them.
The cops said yes, and when they bought some beers they were given HK$20 (about US$3) coupons, which ostensibly were for buying drinks. In actual fact, however, the coupons entitled patrons to play a dice game with the staff whose name translates, rather straightforwardly, to the “grasping breasts game.”
Apple Daily reports that depending on the number rolled, a player was given either a “penalty” or a “reward,” with outcomes including giving one of the girls a HK$20 tip, drinking a shot, clapping one’s hands, holding a girl’s breast, putting one’s face in the girl’s breasts, or placing one of the girls’ heads in one’s crotch.
The newspaper reports that the two officers purchased a total of 75 coupons, worth HK$1,500 (about US$191), and played this game for about three to four hours.
The duo returned to the bar four more times, and on the last occasion — which was caught on CCTV — brought three male colleagues and one female colleague to participate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyVJ1Asgxkc&frags=pl%2Cwn
Having amassed a sufficient body of evidence, police brought the hammer down at 1am on June 22, when the cops revealed their true identities and arrested Yim and 32 other people — including 26 Thai women — and seized about HK$73,000 (about US$9,300) in cash from the premises.
Eight women were earlier jailed for two months for soliciting for an immoral purpose and breaching the conditions of their stay.
Defense lawyers questioned the decision by police to send officers to the bar five times, spending four to five hours there each time, and indicated that public money was used to fund the visits.
One of the police officers, Wu Chi-lam, when quizzed by the defense, said he couldn’t remember how many times he grabbed a woman’s breast during the investigation, but noted that he and his colleagues were given permission by their superiors to take part in the game, adding that if they didn’t, they would have aroused suspicions.
Magistrate Joseph To Ho-shing sided with the officers, calling their evidence reliable and credible, and said that the drinking games were clearly cover for sexual services.
To defended the visits, saying they were needed for the cops to collect evidence, and to investigate Yim’s role in the operation.
Yim, for her part, maintained through her lawyer that no sexual services were involved, no underage girls were working at the bar, and that none of the women were forced to either undress or masturbate for the guests.
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