A 19-year-old local male victim has allegedly fallen into a trap and lost HKD29,111 in the hopes of purchasing Covid-19 medicines, the Judiciary Police (PJ) disclosed yesterday.
The PJ had no information as to what type of Covid-19 medicines the victim attempted to purchase. According to various sources, Pfizer’s Paxlovid is sold per course of treatment for USD500 to 700 at wholesale price, which equates to approximately MOP4,000 to 5,600.
According to the police statement, on January 4, the victim saw that a shopping website was selling Covid-19 medicines. He managed to get in touch with a staff member of a company which claimed to be selling the medicines.
After some communications, he decided to purchase some of these medicines from the company. He was told to settle the amount through an online payment intermediary platform, using his credit cards.
He told the police that between January 4 and 7, he made six purchases from the company to the value of HKD20,000.
On January 11, the company told the victim that some of the medicines he ordered would be delivered to Macau on the same day. However, at the end of the day, the medicines had not arrived.
Worse still, that the company staffer told the victim that due to certain delivery complications, he had to pay an additional HKD6,000 to have the medicine delievered. He made the extra payment through the same platform.
Without seeing his order delivered, he checked the status of his parcel with the waybill number he was given by the company, but found it invalid. He contacted the company again but got no reply, so he then contacted the police.
The 19-year-old reported a loss of HKD29,111, including the surcharges.
In another alleged scam that the PJ discovered on January 12, the local female victim in her 30’s had reportedly been added to an unknown chat group claiming to have Lai See distribution activities. In order to get Lai See, she was told to download another app.
After signing up in the app, she was told to follow some WeChat public accounts so as to obtain monetary returns. She eventually received 230 Chinese yuan.
Later, another person told her to visit a website, where she was told to make payments with her credit card. The payments were to purchase film tickets. The victim was promised 40% of the total money spent as commission, which would be transferred to a designated account.
On January 13, the victim made the first payment but did not get her commission. On the contrary, she was told to make more payments in order to have both her money and commission refunded.
Following this instruction, she made five additional payments with her credit card. In spite of her following this advice, she did not get her money or commission. She was even told to make additional payments using various excuses, besides surrendering more personal information.
At this point, the woman realized that she might have been scammed, and approached the police. She reported a total loss of MOP176,000. AL
