CRIME | Local woman loses MOP220,000 in online dating scam

A female resident of Macau in her 40s has reportedly lost around 220,000 patacas in a scam conducted through a social media platform, the Judiciary Police (PJ) reported yesterday during the regular joint press conference of the police forces.
According to the PJ report, the married woman claimed she met an individual through an online platform in March this year and they had been chatting for over one month.
This man told the woman he was an airline pilot based in the U.S. but that he was soon to travel to Turkey to collect an inheritance from his mother that was valued at USD17 million (about 136 million patacas).
On April 13, this person again contacted the woman saying that upon arriving in Turkey, he had been robbed and injured, losing all his possessions. He requested she help him by transferring USD7,000 to an account in a bank in Thailand, which she did.
Five days later, the same man called once more for help, saying that the account in which the inheritance was deposited had been frozen, and that to reactivate it and handle the process of retrieving the money, he needed to spend about USD20,000.
Again, the woman agreed to help and transferred the amount to the same bank account in Thailand. But, on April 23, and already being in possession of the alleged inheritance, the man claimed he needed an extra USD15,000 to be able to make his return to the US.
This time, the woman found the request suspicious and assumed she had been involved in a scam. She decided to report the case to the PJ.
In total, she claimed to have lost the equivalent of MOP 220,000. She also noted to police that the lost money belonged to both she and her husband, as she is a housewife and does not have a salary.
Although the PJ is continuing to investigate the case, the force noted that, as in almost all cases of this kind, it is often impossible to identify and bring the perpetrators to justice.