Crime | Another HKD900,000 lost on ‘Health Bureau’ scam call

Over the past few days, two local residents have reported losing a total of HKD907,551 over so-called “Health Bureau” scam calls, the Judiciary Police (PJ) reported.

Although this illegal scheme is not new and local authorities have issued several warnings about it on multiple occasions, residents of Macau are still falling victim to the scam.

Two residents separately claim to have lost HKD801,000 and HKD106,551 respectively in scams involving fraudulent phone calls that claim to alert the victims to an illegal importation of Covid-19 vaccines via courier from the mainland.

Upon the victims responding that they have not acquired such a product, the call was allegedly transferred to a different department claiming to be a police department in the Mainland. On this call, the victims were informed that their personal data and banking information might have been stolen.

The scammers then asked the victims to transfer the funds in their bank accounts to a “safe account” for investigation and to provide access to this account (i.e. username and password) to the scammers.

The victims then lost contact with the scammers and later learned that the funds they moved had been transferred out of the account.

In the first case reported by the PJ, a resident who lost HKD106,551 told the PJ that he was asked to transfer the funds to an account located in the neighboring region of Hong Kong.

Multiple victims informed the PJ that they believed the call was legitimate because, after the call was transferred to the alleged police authorities in the Mainland, they were connected to a video call with a man dressed in a police uniform who claimed to be a police officer responsible for the investigation.