Find/Replace Characters in a string

There is a string "strSearch" which contains characters "&lte;". I would like to replace "&lte;" with "≤", but for some reason it is replaced with "=". The function below works otherwise...the character code is correct. What is the problem here?

Public Function ReplaceinString(strSearch As Variant)
   If IsNull(strSearch) Then
      ReplaceinString = ""
   Else
      ReplaceinString = Replace(strSearch, "&lte;", ChrW(8804))
      MsgBox (ChrW(8804))
   End If
    
End Function