11th September 2026 – (Hong Kong) A 36-year-old Food and Environmental Hygiene Department health inspector is wanted for theft after colleagues allege he bought a winning Mark Six ticket with pooled cash from 15 Market Revitalisation Section staff, then refused to share a first-division prize worth more than HK$63 million a unit and disappeared.
Sources said members of the department’s Market Revitalisation Section clubbed together for the second Mark Six 50th Anniversary Snowball draw on Saturday 5th September, when a HK$185 million snowball lifted the estimated first-division fund to a record HK$228 million. Official results showed 3.5 winning units sharing the jackpot at HK$63,376,610 each, with second prizes of HK$613,630 for 20 units and third prizes of HK$37,400 for 875 units, on total turnover of about HK$365 million. Health inspector Ling was tasked with purchasing the group’s tickets.
After the win, sources said, Ling would not split the money and quarrelled with colleagues. On the evening of Wednesday 9th September he met them again and again refused to share. Fearing he would pocket the entire prize and vanish, they reported the matter to police that night. Officers classified the case as theft, assigned Aberdeen Division Duty Room Team 5, and circulated Ling as a wanted man.
The Food and Environmental Hygiene Department said it was aware police were investigating and would assist as required, but would not comment on details while inquiries continue. The dispute turns on whether a colleague who holds the physical ticket may keep a jackpot bought with others’ stakes — a flashpoint that has soured what should have been a life-changing windfall for a team of civil servants.
Similar entrusted-ticket rows have ended in court before. In 2007 a woman asked a middle-aged teahouse acquaintance to buy Mark Six for her, later found she had won a third prize of about HK$38,000, and said the man swallowed the money and absconded. She reported him and sued; he was jailed for six weeks but could not repay the prize. For Ling’s former pool partners, the Aberdeen theft file and the outstanding warrant are now the only paper trail left while the inspector remains at large and the share of a multi-million-dollar snowball hangs unresolved.