A local woman in her 20’s has reportedly lost about 670,000 patacas in an online investment scam, the Judiciary Police (PJ) said yesterday during the regular joint press conference of the police forces.
According to the report, the woman met a man online at the start of September this year through a mobile app; after this, they started chatting on WeChat frequently, and the man introduced her to a gaming website where she could invest money to make a fast profit.
As usually happens, in the beginning, she invested some money and in a short period she made over 3,000 patacas.
After she gained confidence with the system, she started to invest larger sums using Tether cryptocurrency (USDT) and, on several occasions, she invested USDT66,583 (over MOP538,000).
Problems started when she decided to withdraw the investment, with the platform declining the withdrawal with several excuses, and later asking her to pay some USDT16,212 of alleged taxes so she could access her money.
Instead of paying, she reported the case to the PJ as a scam in which she claims to have lost USDT82,750 which is equivalent to around 670,000 patacas.
The PJ noted that although this type of scam has become very common and has been happening with a higher frequency over the past year or so, people in Macau are still unaware of this and continue to fall prey to these types of online investment frauds which have been responsible for the loss of several millions of patacas this year alone.
