Crime | Online scams continue to find victims among residents

Several kinds of online scams using mobile communication applications (APPs) continue to target local residents, who are reporting the loss of large sums, the Judiciary Police (PJ) informed yesterday during the regular joint press conference of the police forces.

In two separate and unrelated cases, a local 18-year-old student reported a loss amounting to 161,100 patacas, while another man in his 50s declared he had lost as much as 1.3 million Hong Kong dollars.

In the first case, the teenager said they met a person online via a communication app used for same-sex encounters. This individual offered to provide sexual services for 800 patacas across three sessions.

On December 8, the victim went to Taipa as instructed to meet this person, but when he was in the vicinity of the arranged meeting, he received a phone call from a male telling him that he needed to provide payment for a security fee.

After several requests and communications, the teenager lost contact with the man, having lost a total of 161,100 patacas in point coupons that he had been asked to acquire from convenience stores. Only then did he report the case to the PJ.

In the second case, the local resident also met a person through a communication app. However, this individual promised the man he could help him to make very profitable investments in cryptocurrency.

The local man accepted the conditions and transferred HKD41,500 to an account in Hong Kong as instructed.

Overnight he was told he had earned as much as HKD3,000, which lured him to continuing investing in the scheme.

Soon he invested another HKD70,000, which similarly provided almost instant profits.

He initially tried to withdraw the money invested and found he could do so without problems. The series of investments continued until the ‘friend’ informed him that he could get much more money if he invested HKD1.3M in the scheme. This time he would have to pay a 15% commission to his friend.

Due to the trust established by his previous experiences, the victim invested the money. However, after the profit was processed into his account and he tried to withdraw the cash, he was informed first that he could not do so due to a problem with the account and later told that the account had been frozen due to suspicions of money laundering.

Not being able to retrieve his money, the man filed a complaint to the PJ.