A dinner date Romeo wooed lonely Hong Kong women over the internet, then took them for expensive meals and fled, leaving them to pay the bills, a news report said Friday.
The sly charmer took them out for lavish dinners, then asked to use their mobile phones to make a business call and fled shortly before the bill was due to arrive, The South China Morning Post reported.
He ran up a $900 bill eating abalone, lobster and shark fin soup with a woman he met through an internet chat room in late February, the newspaper said.
After feasting on an enormous spread, the jobless 29-year-old asked to borrow her mobile phone, saying he had to make a call outside the restaurant, then fled.
Days later, he was suspected of having run up a $650 tab when he took a 17-year-old schoolgirl out for a meal in the city’s upmarket Causeway Bay shopping district.
He used the same tactic, borrowing the girl’s phone to make a call outside and then fleeing, leaving her with the bill.
The suspect was arrested March 7 when he returned to another branch of the same restaurant chain where he had ran up the $900 bill with another woman.
Staff had been alerted to the man and called police who arrested the suspect at his dinner table with a 35-year-old woman who told officers she met him over the internet the same day.
Police, who have charged the suspect with one count of theft, have appealed for any other women who might have fallen victim to the dinner date trick to contact them. – Sapa-DPA