Mirror ticket scalper goes back to prison

A 20-year-old transport worker received five months yesterday for selling fake Mirror concert tickets and ordered to compensate the victim HK$500.

So Lok-lam had earlier pleaded guilty to obtaining property by deception and possessing a false instrument. He appeared before Amy Chan Wai-mun at West Kowloon magistrates' court.

The court heard that a fan of local boyband Mirror, Cho, planned to buy two tickets from So for HK$10,000 in May after seeing his Facebook post claiming to have tickets for sale.

But when they met at Cheung Sha Wan MTR station on May 8, Cho thought the envelope that contained the tickets was too light. She opened the envelope and found that the tickets were of poor quality.

So suspected them to be fake and questioned So, but he snatched HK$6,500 from her and tried to run away but other passengers helped her catch him.

Officers came to the scene and found HK$6,000 as well as four other fake concert tickets on So.

In mitigation, So's lawyer cited his age and that he has been living with his adoptive family after losing contact with his parents. So has also been suffering from a rheumatic disease in his right knee after an accident.

The lawyer further said there was no evidence that So made the fake tickets, and he committed the crime to increase his income so he could pay for his girlfriend's shopping.

But Chan slammed So for committing a crime again only five months after being released from prison for another incident, saying that So's actions were "premeditated" and that he "took advantage of other people's wish of watching a concert."

Chan started with 7 months for each of the offenses and reduced them for So's guilty plea. The terms will run concurrently.

So was also ordered to return the HK$500 he owed Cho.

Meanwhile, backup dancer Mo Lee Kai-yin, who was critically injured after being hit by a falling video screen that came loose during the fourth show of Mirror's concert on July 28, still remained in a critical condition as of yesterday, a Queen Elizabeth Hospital representative said yesterday.

The 27-year-old dancer remains in intensive care with stable vital signs.

The dance director of the concert and representatives from Hip Hing Loong Stage Engineering Co, which was in charge of the concert's mechanical engineering, went to police's Kowloon West Regional Headquarters yesterday to help with investigations.