Crime | Man lost HKD160,000 to phone scam
A man has fallen victim to a phone scam in which criminals presented themselves as both Macau and mainland police force officers.
The man lost around HKD160,000 to the con artists, the Judiciary Police (PJ) said in a press conference yesterday.
The total amount of money lost was exchanged in two currencies; HKD69,000 and RMB90,000. The victim’s identity was not disclosed by the PJ.
The story traces back to July 20, when the victim received a phone call in the afternoon, with the party initiating the phone call claiming to be from the Macau Customs Service.
The person impersonating a customs officer told the victim that the Macao Customs Service had a file that the victim needed to collect. After this the con artist transferred the phone call to another con artist who spoke Mandarin.
This second con artist told the victim that he had applied for a Macau and Hong Kong travel document for a mainland person and the victim protested that he had not lodged the aforementioned application.
The second con artist then asked the victim to provide his personal information, and transferred the call to a third scammer who claimed to be a member of the mainland’s police force.
The third con artist told the victim that he was involved in financial crimes linked to RMB2 million, and then transferred the call to a fourth con artist, who told the victim that he should buy a new phone to get in contact with mainland police officers to ensure that their phone calls were not monitored.
The victim later bought a new phone to contact the fake police officers.
The criminals told him to open a mainland bank account and transfer his money to that specific account. The criminal insisted that this was necessary for “further investigation.”
At a later point, a fifth criminal, who claimed to be a mainland prosecutor, told the victim to transfer all his assets to that account. The victim then transferred the total amount of money mentioned above to his mainland account.
Following the fifth criminal’s instructions, the victim installed a tracking system on his phone, the phone which he had used to contact the criminals and perform the transactions mentioned above.
On July 23, the criminals called the victim again and told him that he had been put on the mainland’s wanted list, and that he needed to pay RMB500,000 to cancel the arrest warrant.
The victim then informed his father, who reported the events to the police. JZ
Two people blackmailed after naked online chatting
The PJ have released information about two cases of people who were blackmailed after participating in video chats with strangers while being naked. The first case took place last week. The victim talked to a stranger online for ten minutes while naked. After the video chat ended, the criminal blackmailed the victim asking for MOP30,000 if the victim did not want the videos to be posted online. The second case traces back to last March. The victim also chatted naked online with a stranger, and was later blackmailed, initially for RMB888.
