Crime | Four fall victim to nude chat fraud, including two teenagers

In the past few days, the Judiciary Police (PJ) has received four reports related to blackmail following nude video calls, the department said during a press conference yesterday.
The first victim is a local man born in the 1990s. On September 26, he befriended a man claiming to be an Australian citizen of African origin who lives in Macau.
After a short period of chatting online, the two then switched to the app Line for further communication, which led to a nude video call.
According to the police authority, the suspect “unexpectedly” took his clothes off during the call. Only then did the victim realize that his partner was actually white.
Despite his sense of unease over the man’s lie about his ethnicity, the victim continued the chat which lasted roughly eight minutes.
About 30 minutes after, the suspect contacted the victim to demand a payment of $1,000 (about MOP8,000), otherwise he would share the video with the victim’s friends and relatives through contact information the suspect obtained from the victim’s Instagram.
The victim bargained the price down to MOP2,000, although he still did not pay. Eventually, he reported the case to the police authority.
In the second case, the victim is a 17-year-old male middle school student. On September 26, he befriended a woman on Facebook and switched to Line to continuing communicating with her.
That evening, the victim engaged in a 21-minute long nude video chat with the woman.
About 45 minutes after the call had ended, the student’s father received a link to the video and he discovered out that his son had been recorded. At the same time, an unknown man contacted the father on WhatsApp asking for a HKD10,000 payment to delete the video.
The father did not pay and reported the case to the police authority with his son.
The third victim is another male middle school student who is 16 years old. He was contacted by an unknown woman on Instagram who he then befriended on Google Hangouts. The woman proposed a nude video call which went on for seven minutes.
One hour after the call, the victim received a link to the video. The woman asked for MOP7,000 for the video to be deleted. The student did not pay and reported the case to the police authority immediately.
The only victim who has claimed to lose money is the fourth victim, who is also a Macau resident.
On September 26, the victim befriended someone who claimed to be a woman from Hong Kong on Skout.
The pair engaged in a five-minute-long nude video call. Thirty minutes after their call ended, the suspect asked the victim for HKD6,000 to prevent the video from being shared with all his contacts.
The victim transferred the MOP6,000 to the criminals. However, the blackmail did not stop and the victim received new requests for more money. However, this time the victim did not pay and reported the case to the police authority.
In August, three young people, including two students, came forward as victims of blackmail following nude video chats with strangers.
The cases all share similarities. The suspects first came into contact with the strangers through a mobile app. The unidentified suspect then instructed them to download a specific app for nude video calls. The criminals then blackmailed the victims to demand money.
As of press time, the police authority is still investigating the four cases and no suspects have been identified.

Driver tricks passenger over banknote

A taxi driver in his 60s tricked a female customer into believing that she had given him a 100 pataca banknote instead of a 1,000 pataca banknote.
During yesterday’s police press conference, the Public Security Police Force (PSP) reported the fraud case. On September 23, the victim, a mainland female tourist, got in a taxi at Avenida da Amizade to travel to Cotai.
The taxi meter indicated her fare was 55 patacas, which she paid for with one bank note and received 45 patacas back. During the payment, the taxi driver was rushing the passenger out of the vehicle, which was dark inside at the time. Under pressure from the taxi driver, the woman took the change and got out of the vehicle. The woman thought she had given the driver a 100 pataca bank note.
However, she realized later that she had actually paid with a 1,000 pataca bank note and that the driver had cheated her. She reported the case to the police authority.
Later, the PSP apprehended the driver and interrogated him. The suspect admitted he had taken the money and hidden it. JZ