Sting operation cracks sale of illegal lottery

A sting operation by the police to bring control to the sale of illegal lottery has yielded five arrests in the course of this week of persons who sold the lottery to undercover agents. Two vendors were arraigned this morning in the Magistrate Court; fifty year old Wai Ming Cheng and twenty-three year old Melanie Jones.
Cheng, the owner of Ming Shop on Caesar Ridge Road, is accused of illegally selling twenty pieces of number twenty-eight and twenty pieces of number twenty-five to an undercover agent yesterday evening. Cheng is on bail and is to reappear in court on September twenty-third.

Jones is employed at Number One Shopping Center on Central American Boulevard and is accused of selling forty pieces of number sixty-eight.
In the sting operation, police also nabbed, thirty-five year old Yang Yan Pei, the owner of Eighty-Eight Shopping Center on Douglas Jones Street who police say sold twenty pieces of number forty-eight and twenty pieces of number fifty.
Earlier this week, thirty seven year old Moran Grey, employed at Ninfa Store, on Cemetery Road was arraigned in the Magistrate Court for the illegal sale of seventeen pieces of twenty-two on Sunday, July twenty-seventh. The fifth person, is Mirtha Welch, a sales person employed at Everyday Supermarket on Racoon Street, who allegedly sold thirty pieces of nineteen on Sunday, July twenty-seventh.

According to the Magistrates’ Court, a person is liable to pay a fine of not more than five thousand dollars or a sentence of up to two years in jail on conviction of a first and second offence. And any person convicted twice and charged with a third offence will be tried on indictment.