Junket operator at the heart of a $4.8m SkyCity Adelaide dispute ‘intended to steal’ the winnings, court told

A man accused of perpetrating a $4.8m fraud at the Adelaide casino is facing criminal charges and allegedly tried to coerce a young hostess to scam a high-roller.

The junket operator being sued over a $4.8 million “fraud” at Skycity’s Adelaide casino intended to steal the casino chips in question, is banned from gambling in Australia, and was almost stabbed to death four years ago, a separate court case was told.

Xiongming Xie is also reportedly closely linked to Xiangmo Huang, the billionaire property developer whose dealings with former Labor senator Sam Dastyari led to him resigning from the Senate in 2018.

Mr Xie is currently on conditional bail, and will face a NSW court later this month, charged with common assault.

A 2019 Brisbane case, dealing with the same matter as the SkyCity Adelaide case, was seeking to freeze the assets of Mr Xie, including two palatial Sydney homes.

Xiongming Xie and his luxurious Hunters Hill property.

The waterfront Hunters Hill property was sold while Xie was behind bars facing serious criminal charges.

In late 2019 he was attempting to sell a $5 million property at Hunters Hill in Sydney from behind bars in a NSW country jail, while he was facing ongoing criminal proceedings.

The waterfront property, which some of Mr Xie’s businesses – which include Yuhu (Aus) Capital and Australia China Shaolin Kung Fu Pty Ltd – were registered to, eventually sold for around the $4.85 million asking price.

In the case being tried in Adelaide, high-roller Linong Ma is suing SkyCity Adelaide, along with Mr Xie and another junket operator, for “breach of trust” and “fraud” respectively.

Junket operators bring in high-rollers, often from China, to gamble in Australian casinos, and are paid commissions by the casinos in return.

Mr Ma claims he won about $5 million playing baccarat in Adelaide in May 2019, but as a result of Mr Xie’s actions, is out of pocket $4.84m. He says his winnings were remitted to Mr Xie by SkyCity, and he has not since been paid. He says SkyCity was involved in “negligence” in the way it handled the money.

In the 2019 Brisbane case, written submissions were tendered to the court, claiming that Mr Xie’s ex-girlfriend and former employee, Shingyee “Josephine” Goh, then 24, a Malaysian national on a student visa from Haymarket in Sydney, had been with Mr Ma on the night he had his lucky streak, as it was her job to sit beside men as they gambled and collect their chips.

The exterior of SkyCity Adelaide’s redeveloped entrance. Picture: Russell Millard

News Corp Australia reported in July 2019 that Ms Goh told the court in her statement that Mr Xie told her he intended to steal the chips.

She said Mr Xie pressured her to lie to Mr Ma about gambling and losing $4 million herself, or to steal $1 million and go into hiding.

Ms Goh refused both options and told Mr Ma what had happened, the court heard, telling him Mr Xie told her he could not afford to pay Mr Ma his winnings.

Ms Goh stated in her affidavit that she was afraid for her safety because Mr Xie allegedly told her he was going to send two men to “take her somewhere” the next day.

Mr Ma told the court that Ms Goh told him that “Xie gambles a lot and he has substantial amounts of debts”.

Ms Goh told the court that Mr Xie told her “he was banned from the gambling industry in Australia” and that he “was almost killed” in June 2017 when somebody tried “to kill him with a knife”.

In the Adelaide case documents, Ms Goh is characterised by Mr Ma as being “employed or engaged by Mr Xie as an escort or hostess for high-rollers’’.

Mr Ma also claims that when it came time for him to collect his winnings, another woman, a Ms Zhang, appeared, deposited his chips and “purported to sign a receipt therefore’’.

While that receipt was torn up, it is alleged SkyCity later took the chips from Mr Ma’s safety deposit box and deposited them with Mr Xie.

A Ms Zhang is mentioned in a Sydney Morning Herald article about Mr Xie, which says it is alleged she was directing a high roller how to gamble at Star casino, via instructions from Mr Xie through a blue earpiece she was wearing.

Mr Huang, who was reportedly Mr Xie’s former boss, paid for Mr Dastyari’s personal legal bills, and made numerous donations to both major parties including $405,000 to the Coalition in the 2014 financial year and $200,000 to the Labor Party the previous year.

Mr Dastyari resigned from the Senate in 2017 over his personal connections to Mr Huang and told a NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption inquiry in 2019 he had serious questions as to whether Mr Huang was “an agent of influence for the Chinese Government”.

News Corp Australia reported in late 2020 that the Australian Taxation Office is trying to take Mr Huang to the High Court over a $140 million tax bill.

Mr Huang left Australia in 2018 and his residency visa was cancelled.

His political ties came under increased scrutiny when the ICAC in 2019, heard he was the source of an Aldi bag filled with $100,000 which was donated to NSW Labor.

He has denied being the source of the donation and further denies all wrongdoing.

SkyCity has declined to comment as the matter is before the courts.