Crime | Digital scams hitting locals on WeChat

Several Macau residents have reportedly been targeted in several cybercrime actions taking place using the WeChat platform, a Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesperson said yesterday in a press conference.

According to the reports, there were at least five crimes related with the mobile app reported in between June 8 and 10, with some cases reporting the loss of several thousands of patacas.

In one of these cases, a 33- year-old male telecommunication technician told the PJ that on June 9, he chatted with a woman on WeChat who told him that she worked in a company that provided the service of tourism guidance.

On the next day, the two chatted again and, allegedly, the woman requested the man to help her by requesting her “service” from the company.

She told the man to keep the receipt of the service request so she could later reimburse him. After that she asked him to buy a reload card for online games valued at MOP1,300 on her behalf and send her the code and password, which he did.

A few minutes later, he said he received a phone call from a person saying that they were the owner of the company for which the woman worked. During that phone call, the alleged company owner said the money he had paid was not enough to allow the service asking him to buy a total of 23 reload cards with an amount of over MOP30,000.

The man did as requested within a few hours of the phone call. After the purchase  he received another phone call from the same person asking for more cards. At that point he did not agree to buy more and decided to file the complaint claiming a loss of about MOP32,000.

In a separate case, a woman (35), who holds the manager position at a local tourism agency, was alerted by friends and relatives on June 10 that there were some problems with her WeChat account as they were receiving requests from someone, in her name, to borrow money.

As she tried to login into her account she realized that she could not do it. When she was able to retrieve her account, she saw in her phone communication from someone, on behalf of her, to one of her friends where she was requesting a loan of RMB3,000.

She then realized that her friend had already fallen into the scam and paid that person through a WeChat transfer.

She informed her friend of the possibility of filing a complaint at the PJ claiming the loss of RMB3,000.

According to the PJ information, between June 8 to June 10, there were reports of at least three more similar cases, all involving local residents, male and female, that told the police they had been targeted with similar cases and then, when alerted by their friends and family, they managed to stop the cybercrime by changing their access passwords on the mobile app.

None of these other three cases reported any loss.