3 Chinese nationals who were serving time in jail for theft released this week and were deported to China

​Three Chinese nationals, Yulong Xie, 27; Jiahui Wen, 37 and Yong Zhong, 39, from Jiangxi Province in China was 2017 were all sentenced to three years in jail in for the theft of EC $104,705 from ATM Machines of the National Bank of Dominica between July 5 and July 9, 2016. All three of them were released this week.
 
They had arrived in Dominica in July 2016. On July 7, 2016 the National Bank of Dominica (NBD) noticed that large sums were withdrawn from two of its ATM machines in Roseau and became suspicious. Surveillance cameras revealed to bank officials, that this was done by the Chinese. They alerted police who secure the video recordings at the bank.
 
Further recordings revealed that the men operated mostly at nights. On July 8, 2016. The police mounted an operation during the night and spotted Xie and Wen at two ATMs at the Royal Bank. They confronted them, and a search of their bags found large quantity of cash, magnetic strips and VIP cards. They were arrested and taken into custody for questioning.
 
A search warrant was executed on room 105 at the Fort Young Hotel where the searchers met Zhong. Three suitcases were found along with two laptop computers, 17 ATM Skimmers, two magnetic strip cards, reading and writing devices, 261 magnetic strip cards marked VIP were found. Zhong was arrested on suspicion. They also found US$20,000, along with several sums of money in EC, Hong Kong, Bahamian and Chinese currency, among others.
 
Investigations confirmed that due the transactions conducted by the Chinese, NBD lost EC$104,705.00. They pleaded guilty on January 10, 2017 to the charge of theft and were sentenced January 19, 2017 by Justice Victoria Charles Clarke, who ordered them deported after serving their jail time, and also ordered compensation of EC$5,652.87 to the NBD to be paid in six months, or in default six months in jail. The EC$104,705.00 was ordered returned to the bank.