Crime | Mainland Chinese student falls victim to phone hoax

A female mainland Chinese studying at a local university lost RMB120,000 in a phone scam where the male caller’s voice resembled her professor’s, a representative from the Judiciary Police said at a press briefing yesterday afternoon.
The 32-year-old student reported the crime to the police authorities after she learnt that she had fallen for the hoax over the weekend. Last Saturday morning, the victim received a call from a Mandarin-speaking man who claimed to be her professor at school and asked her for money to cope with an emergency. Deeply convinced by the man’s voice, the student then immediately remitted the amount requested through her friends’ bank accounts on the mainland to the man’s account given in the phone conversation.
Failing to reach her professor for confirmation of the transfer afterwards, the student approached the head of her department on the afternoon of the same day to see if he could find him. However, a phone call with the “genuine professor” revealed that the entire episode had been a scam.
Separately, a local driver was arrested last Saturday by the Judiciary Police (PJ) for illegally gambling away his company’s client deposit worth HKD400,000, the police authorities revealed at a media briefing.