Crime | Local man scammed while trying to help friend

A local man was involved in a phone scam that resulted in a loss of RMB10,000, the Judiciary Police (PJ) said in a press conference. He received a call from a local phone number by someone impersonating one of his friends on June 7, claiming to be in trouble on the mainland. The impersonator claimed he had been arrested in a case involving prostitution and was using a different number because he had no access to his old phone number. He asked the victim to transfer RMB10,000 to an account of a mainland banking institution.

The victim was at first suspicious and tried to call his friend on his old number via WeChat, but he failed to pick up the call, leading the victim to believe that it might be true.

As his friend had not returned the call by the following day, he decided to transfer the money around 1 p.m., believing that he was helping his friend.

Later that same day, his friend finally returned the call, saying that he had no problem and that he had not called for help.

The victim realized he had been scammed and reported the case to the PJ.

In a separate case, a local woman similarly notified the PJ, saying that she had been targeted by an attempted phone scam using the so-called “detained parcel” system.

She was asked to pay the amount of USD1,500 in order to release a package gift that had supposedly been sent by a online friend (an alleged engineer from the USA) that contained luxury goods and cash.

Instead she reported the case to the police as a scam by someone using that identity on an undisclosed social network platform. RM