HONG KONG: A “charlatan” who claimed to be the lover of a late Hong Kong billionaire was jailed yesterday for 12 years after a court convicted him of forging her will to steal her fortune.
Bartender-turned-feng shui master Tony Chan claimed to be the sole beneficiary of Nina Wang’s $13bn estate she inherited after the kidnapping and disappearance of her property mogul husband.
A court ruled in 2010 — three years after Wang’s death — that a will in Chan’s possession was fake and after more than 20 hours of deliberation, a jury on Thursday found him guilty of forging it.
Sentencing the 53-year-old, judge Andrew Macrae described his conduct as “shameless and wicked as well as borne of unparalleled greed”. “Forgery of a will is particularly nasty and insidious as the deceased can’t answer back”.
The sensational case has for years gripped the former British colony and generated blanket media coverage, with Chan often cast as a fraudster who duped Wang by promising to find her kidnapped husband and cure her of cancer. Much of the case revolved around Chan’s claims that he and Wang were lovers and that she promised to leave him everything. During the trial, his lawyers showed a home video of the pair in a passionate embrace. But the court heard that Chan was a grasping chancer who, despite earning HK$3bn ($385m) for his feng shui services from Wang, was not content and wanted to take over her business empire and fortune. AFP
