Crime | No end in sight for social media scams

Relationship scams taking place over social media are on the rise, with the police authorities revealing new cases every week.

Yesterday’s joint press conference with the Judiciary Police (PJ) was no exception, with the PJ presenting two more such cases.

The victim of the first case was a 30-year-old local male who, on February 21, allegedly met a woman over an online communication platform.

The woman soon revealed that she worked as an escort, and called the man the next day complaining that she had been assigned by her company to spend the night with a client she did not like.

To help release her from the assignment, the man needed to “hire” her by paying the MOP1,800 equivalent to her working fee, she said, promising to return the amount as soon as they met.

The man did as she asked and one hour later, he received a call from an alleged manager who informed the victim that he was required to pay a deposit of MOP6,500.

After negotiating, the man eventually paid MOP5,500 using MyCard prepaid cards as he had been instructed to in the first payment.

However, the scammers continued to ask for more money. This time, the reason was that he was not yet a “member” of the company, and would need to pay another MOP13,000.

After realizing that the amounts were quite high, he decided to call off the deal and ask for a refund. Soon after he received another call from a second man claiming to be from the finance department of the company, informing him that he had only paid MOP7,300 and that the minimum refund card that the company had was for MOP10,000, and to be entitled to the refund, he needed to pay the remaining MOP2,700 to reach the MOP10,000 minimum.

Reluctantly, he made one more payment. Not long after, the same person called claiming that they had run out of MOP10,000 refund cards and that they had only cards to refund MOP15,000 at the moment. To that end, he requested an additional MOP5,000. The victim again accepted, increasing his losses to MOP15,000 but the phone calls requesting further money continued.

That was enough for the man, and he instead filed a complaint with the PJ.

In the second case, a 40-year- old local woman was conned by a man in a money loaning scam.

She said that she met the man via an online communication platform and that she chatted with him for over a month without ever meeting him in person.

On February 20, the man, who claimed to be a civil construction contractor, called the woman asking for help as one of his machines had problems that would cost HKD200,000 to fix, which he did not have available at that moment.

The woman agreed to help him, transferring a total of HKD150,000 for him over several transactions on February 20 and 21.

On February 23, the man called again asking for more money, saying that he still required more. However, she suspected that she was being scammed and asked for a video call with the man.

He rejected the request and she called for help from the PJ, reporting losses of HKD150,000.