CRIME | Engineer loses considerable portion of savings in mainland honey-trap

A local engineer was duped into giving away a large part of his savings in a premeditated honey-trap to an anonymous group from the mainland, according to the Judiciary Police.
The victim, a 33-year-old project foreman, has lost a total of RMB246,000 to the hoax, which allegedly started in November last year. He met a mainland girl through an online dating site at that time and became acquainted with her.
Since then, the man has been exchanging text messages through the Line app with the girl, who claimed she worked in a nightclub as a barmaid. It was said that he even gave his personal contact details to her.
On the fifteenth of June this year, the girl texted the victim to offer him sex-related services, meanwhile professing that she needed a client after rejecting one she did not like.
Upon agreeing to the deal, the victim later received a call from a man posing as a staff member from her company, who requested for him to hand over RMB1,000 for the service. The victim then paid for the service via the Chinese third-party online payment method of Alipay.
Soon after, the man received another call where he was told the girl had been arrested for offering such services. In addition, the man on the other end of the phone call accused the victim of releasing tips-off to the mainland security authorities, which led to the arrest.
Denying that accusation, the perplexed victim promised to post half of the RMB14,000 bail money for the detained girl for fear that the episode would cause trouble for his family, as threatened by the group.
However, the episode did not end there for the victim, as he later received another call from the same group who claimed that the mainland police had raided their venue, resulting in many arrests of their employees offering similar services.
The man then promised to cover part of the bailouts involving hundreds of thousands after succumbing to the group’s intimidation. He finally contacted the police last Saturday after discussing the months-long manipulation by the group with his family.