Crime | MOP7m already swindled in phone scams this year, more than in whole of 2014

The Judiciary Police have reported a total of 158 phone scam cases since the beginning of the year, with a sum of over MOP7,000,000 swindled. This amount of money exceeds the entire amount of more than MOP6,000,000 taken in the 375 cases recorded last year.
However, the number of cases recorded in the first five months of this year was similar to that of the  equivalent period last year. The authorities appealed to the public, encouraging them to remain vigilant when receiving telephone calls which demand personal information such as names, accounts and passwords.
According to the security force’s data, the number of cases recorded in 2014 was more than double that of the preceding year, with a new type of fraud rearing its ugly head since April.
62 percent of the telephone-
based fraud cases recorded in 2015 have so far been related to the impersonation of mainland officials. According to previous cases, scammers usually started the conversation by fraudulently identifying themselves as a security authority, or as a staff member working for a post office or a bank.
To further convince their victims, the crooks would forge websites and arrest orders, or even create fake caller identification. Regardless of the ways  in which they fabricated their story, the police said that their ultimate purpose was to ensure that victims handed over money to be deposited into  mainland bank accounts. The authorities, however, rejected the media’s assumption that mainland Chinese had been involved in most cases.
Over the previous week, the PJ authorities have been notified of seven cases of telephone deception.  One of these included a “guess who” -type scenario while another two were examples of “mainland security impersonation.” The final four were akin to “official impersonation”, but no losses were incurred.
Last Thursday night, an Indonesian-born local received a call purportedly by his friend back in his hometown, who asked him for RMB 90,000 for bail as he was under detention in mainland China with three of his friends.
The victim then remitted RMB 60,000 to a mainland account offered by the scammer. Three hours later, he failed to reach the caller by phone and after contacting his friends and family, realized that it was a scam.
In two other cases, university students from the mainland were scammed by two different callers posing as company staff. The callers accused the students of being involved in illegal activities and threatened that  they would be denounced to authorities, unless a payment was made.
Both victims came to realize the scams only after having their money sent to an unknown bank account. Staff reporter