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LOAN-SHARKING AND DEBT COLLECTION
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Loan-sharking and debt collecting are very profitable forms of organised crime and range from syndicates operating from Macau, which escort debtors back to Hong Kong to collect payments and syndicates operating out of legally established finance companies, to small scale groups of a few criminals which get together to extend loans of a few thousand dollars.
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Many small but respectable businessmen, who have had their credit and cheque discounting facility stopped by banks, resort to loan-sharks to try to overcome their business problems.
Many of these loan-sharks advertise openly in the local
newspapers.
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Casino operators and illegal bookmakers allow some customers to bet on credit. Where a customer loses, he may fall prey to loan-sharks. Often those loan-sharks have links with the casino operators or illegal bookmakers. Frequently, one of the links is membership of the same triad society. The loan-sharks cannot enforce repayment of their loans by legal means. They therefore resort to illegal means to enforce repayment. There are numerous reported cases which demonstrate that these illegal means may include violence or blackmail. The personnel employed by loan-sharks to enforce repayment are, in almost all cases, members of triad street gangs.
PROTECTION RACKETS
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Protection rackets are also another profitable form of organised crime. There is a major difference between two 16 year old boys demanding a few dollars from a shopkeeper and the larger gangs demanding half a million dollars from a building contractor. The former is certainly not organised crime but the latter most certainly is.
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As with many other forms of organised crime, the gangs are becoming more sophisticated in their protection rackets. They threaten the contractors. When the contractors do not pay they find their machinery, valued up to say a quarter or a half million dollars, has been destroyed. As the next step, the gangs approach the contractors and get them to employ watchmen to stop the damage. After the contractors have paid, they find that there are no watchmen provided but the damage
ceases.
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