Gangpiaojia, a housing agency which mainly provides rental services for students coming to Hong Kong for study, started a farce of forced eviction under the pandemic in early March this year. DotDotNews reported in depth that the company is suspected of being a leasing agent engaged in "rent-to-rent".
In mid-May, a student tenant found the police for help, and the police temporarily classified the case as "obtaining property by deception" for investigation. The police have arrested four people, including two people in charge of the agency involved, who are suspected of committing the crime of obtaining property by deception.
Until now, the case is still under investigation.
In May, Tai Kung Pao exposed Gangpiaojia's suspect illegal behaviours such as deliberately not paying rent, writing bad checks to landlords and even "inciting" landlords to evict students from their rental units through a series of reporting.
The students who have paid the whole year's rent in advance but were forced to move out, and the landlords who have been forced to sublet or even convert their flats in default, both have been fooled by the housing agency.
Helpless students: huge deposit could only be returned in August
After Gangpiaojia's "forcing" students to move by all means, many students haven't got the deposit that the agency promised to give back. According to a recording obtained exclusively by DotDotNews, Gary Lau, the person in charge of Gangpiaojia, said in a meeting with students in mid-March that the deposit and other payments would not be refunded until August.
When a student pointed out that the company stated "refund in 14 working days after ending the lease", he said, "Oh really? I'll ask my colleague to change it. Thank you for reminding us." He also said, "If no students come in the fall of 2022, we will definitely not be able to continue." This was also used as an excuse for defaulting on payments.
One of the affected student tenants told DotDotNews that, using the flat he rented as an example, Gangpiaojia owed him and his roommates more than HK$96,000 in refunds, "and as far as I know there are many more victims, maybe a couple of hundred."
The students can take very limited action in the Mainland, but have asked other students in Hong Kong to report the case. Another student, who was owed a deposit by Gangpiaojia and had been informed to leave by the landlord, said that since she was about to graduate and leave Hong Kong, she could only negotiate with the landlord to let them stay in the original flat for a little longer period of time, feeling helpless and hopeless.
Anxious parents: don't know where for children to settle down
Students' parents are also affected. Ms. Li, a parent said in a DotDotNews interview that in February this year, due to the outbreak in Hong Kong, her child went back to the mainland for a period of time. During that time, they received a notice from Gangpiaojia about the consolidation of housing, so they had to ask roommates to help them pack belongings.
"The company said we would get an extra month's rent subsidy if surrender before April 15, so we applied for an early surrender. "Ms. Li said.
At the same time, the housing agency also promised Ms. Li that if her children returned to Hong Kong and still wanted to move in, it could book and arrange for the original room to move in. Ms. Li then signed another rental agreement for the new semester after August and paid the deposit.
According to Ms. Li, on April 27 Gangpiaojia said the luggage was set in the luggage warehouse, then Ms. Li asked for the pickup certificate and contact phone number, but the other party has since "lost contact".
Angry about this, Ms. Li said, "As a parent, we should pave the way for our child to study. But now, we don't know how to go about it, we don't have any answer and they have disappeared. What trick is this?"
Ms. Li said she was worried about whether her children would be able to move in when they return to Hong Kong for school in August, and that she did not know how to get the rent and deposit she had paid to Gangpiaojia. "Will the new rental agreement for August still be honoured? If we can't move in, we will have to find a new room," said Ms Li.
Bewildered landlord: Gangpiaojia's director pretends to be normal client
The reason Gangpiaojia asked students to move out was the landlord wanted to repossess the flats. It is suspected that the landlord's request for repossession of the flat was due to the fact that Gangpiaojia had deliberately stopped paying rent to the landlord. It was only when landlords came to collect the rent or repossessed the flat that they discovered that the actual occupant was not the same person as the "contracted tenant".
One of the landlords said that it was a woman surnamed So who had signed the lease from the beginning to the end, and that the other party had not signed the lease under the name of Gangpiaojia, so she thought it was for a family client. In January this year, the woman said that she wanted to postpone the rent payment due to the pandemic and then offered to use the deposit to offset the rent, which the landlord agreed to because of the difficulty to make a living under the epidemic. However, when the landlord started to pursue the matter after several month, the lady admitted that the flat had been sublet out.
"We asked her about Gangpiaojia, then she told us that she used to be the director but was sacked later. It was not her business any more." the landlord also mentioned that the woman tried to persuade the landlord to sign the consent to end the lease as soon as possible, "We didn't dare because we are basically giving up our claims if we do."
The landlord said that the woman "pretended to be a normal client" and illegally changed the flat after signing the lease, turning the living room into a room and subletting it under the name of Gangpiaojia - while the lease stated that "subletting and partitioning are not allowed". "It is very difficult for us to pursue the matter and we don't know who to approach. We normal citizens know nothing on handling this. " The landlord lamented.
Current person in charge: company's fund was taken and used up
In mid-May, a student union in Hong Kong reached out to Mr. Ng, another person in charge of Gangpiaojia, to hold an offline meeting with the student victims, as more and more students were suffering.
According to the transcript of the meeting, Mr. Ng claimed that he had only recently taken over the management of Gangpiaojia and that Gary Lau (Lau Shui Hing) and his wife had been in charge of it before, with Gary as the big boss of Hong Kong Drifters and Mr. Ng as one of the shareholders. When asked when the students' refunds would be enforced, Mr. Ng revealed that for various reasons, there was no money in the company's account now, "Our company's funds have been taken away and used up."
When pressed on the flow of funds, Mr. Ng was vague. He then said that in April and recently, he had applied for a HK$5 million bank loan and two HK$3 million "100 per cent guaranteed loans" from the government, in an attempt to use the money to cover the company's current capital shortfall.
As for the defaulting landlords, Mr. Ng said he was contacting more than 200 landlords one by one over the phone to explain their current situation and rent handling options, in the hope that they could continue to manage the housing units. He also said he was unable to contact most of the landlords for the time being due to staffing problems.
In response to Mr. Ng's comment, some landlords said that instead of dealing with the problem of rent arrears, Mr. Ng wanted to continue to "do what is convenient for him" and earn rent for the "sub-divided units" by using the units that have been converted in breach of the lease, so as to save the renovation cost of finding new premises. "If he needs to find a new flat, it will cost him much to remodel it again, so of course he will start with us."
"Former big boss"plotted to"wipe out"debtsby close down Gangpiaojia
During the offline meeting, Mr. Ng said that the former big boss Gary Lau and his wife were paid more than HK$100,000 a month, with food, accommodation and transportation all paid by the company. In the past two years, the company has taken out loans from the bank because of the pandemic.
In January this year, Gary Lau told Wu that he wanted to let Gangpiaojia close down directly, so that no more money would be paid. The investors' money, students' deposits, landlords' rent, etc. would all be "wiped out" through the company's closure.
Mr. Ng said he was strongly opposed to the idea at the time, "I take bankruptcy very seriously and I don't want to go bankrupt."
On April 21 this year, the WeChat account of "GPJ Gangpiaojia" published an announcement about "Gangpiaojia being acquired", but the article was recently inaccessible. When the announcement was made, Tai Kung Pao asked Gary Lau, the post owner of Gangpiaojia, about the change of ownership and he said at the time that it was a fact that the company had changed hands and that he had been fired for not doing a good job.
However Mr. Ng, the person in charge of the company, said that "the information you (the reporter) got was wrong" and that the company had not changed hands and the previous announcement was wrong, so it was deleted.
Mr. and Mrs. Lau, the former majority shareholder of Gangpiaojia who claimed to be "expelled", "sacked" and "dismissed" to students, landlords and the media, also have a number of affiliated companies in their hands.
According to Mr. Ng, Mr. And Mrs. Lau also has several companies. "we have more than a dozen companies, including three subsidiaries they (Mr. and Mrs. Lau) did not transfer to me. I guess the reason is that these three companies are new and have signed contracts with most of the landlords, so those landlords actually have control over these houses."
Mr. Ng said that Mr. and Mrs. Lau are currently "selling" their own landlords to the new platform, "I went to contact his landlords, but I don't know what he will do to me."
"Gary (Lau) doesn't want to spend a dollar anymore and want to shift the responsibility to me to make himself safe." Mr. Ng claimed that he had split up with Gary Lau. "I also have the responsibility and I cannot run away. I'm one of those shareholders and directors. Before they forced me to sign those documents but I still refused...I don't want to help them pay anymore at all."
Police arrests four of company with the offence of obtaining property by deception
The offline meeting did not help to move the matter forward, and to this day DotDotNews is still receiving requests for help from students, a group of victims who do not know what to do. After a number of media outlets followed up on the incident and the student tenants called the police for help, there was finally a breakthrough in the incident a few days ago.
According to Ta Kung Pao, some student tenants who rented rooms through Gangpiaojia were reported to the police in mid-May after being faced with the landlord's representative for several days to collect rent, and repossess their flats or even trespass into their homes.
In response to an enquiry from Ta Kung Pao, the police said on May 18 that, the Western Police Station received a report from a mainland woman on May 15, who said that she and three other women had rented a flat on Pokfulam Road through an agency in August last year and paid two months' deposit, and then paid the agency the rent on time every month. On May 14, she heard that the agent had not paid the rent to the landlord since February this year and then reported the case to the police for assistance. The case has been classified as "obtaining property by deception" and is being followed up by the Western Police District Criminal Investigation Team 5.
According to the Hong Kong Wen Wei Po on May 29, the police have recently arrested four people, including two persons in charge of the agency involved in the case. It is reported that the four men and women arrested include a 35-year-old man surnamed Ng, who is currently in charge of the company, and a 36-year-old man surnamed Lau, who is in charge of another related technology company, while the other two are a 34-year-old businessman surnamed Wong and a 35-year-old housewife surnamed So. They are suspected of obtaining property by deception and have been released on bail pending investigation, and will have to report to police in mid-June. The case is still under investigation.
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