HK male sentenced in jail for trying to blackmail Hollywood filming crew

A Hong Kong male was sentenced guilty on Wednesday for attempt to blackmail filming crew of the Hollywood Blockbuster Transformers last year.

Mak Chi-shing, a 27-year-old air conditioning technician, demanded 100,000 Hong Kong dollars from the crew as they shot part of the latest one of the Paramount Pictures' science-fiction series at North Point on Oct. 17, 2013.

Convicted in the District Court, Mak Chi-shing was found guilty on charges of blackmailing and assaulting a police officer. He was sentenced two and a half years in imprisonment.

His 28-year-old elder brother, Mak Chi-hang was acquitted on the blackmail charge due to insufficient evidence. But the judge convicted him of resisting a police officer while he was struggling with the crew, and sentenced him to six weeks in jail.

The judge stressed that the case involved a foreign filming crew and had been broadly reported by the media, which affected Hong Kong's security reputation and could affect foreigners' will to travel to or work in the city.

A filming crew member agreed to pay 1,000 Hong Kong dollars to the brothers, who ran an air-conditioning shop, the night before shooting for the inconvenience brought to them. But when the crew arrived, the younger brother demanded 100,000 Hong Kong dollars, played music loudly at the scene and later began moving bricks out of the shop to obstruct the shooting.

Director Michael Bay spent ten days in Hong Kong last October shooting the latest Transformers movie, Age of Extinction, before he left for Beijing to film on the Great Wall.