Crime | Online scams related to facemasks, investments, gambling and romance

The Judiciary Police (PJ) reported seven online scams during yesterday’s joint police press conference, covering matters from facemasks to online romance.
The police authority said yesterday that it has not found any of the scammers responsible for the online swindles as of the press conference.
In total, the PJ received three reports of scams related to facemasks. In two of these cases, the victims, who are both local Macau residents, got in contact with an online “seller” purporting to supply Japanese-made facemasks at 400 patacas per 100 pieces. The first victim bargained the price down to 300 patacas per 100 pieces, while the second victim paid the full requested amount.
Both victims transferred the money to a bank account supplied by the suspect, who confirmed receipt of the payment. However, the “seller” never delivered the products to the victims and could not be contacted. The “seller” also faked a pharmacy for the victims to collect the facemasks. Both cases took place on April 24.
The third facemask-related incident, believed by the PJ to originate online, is related to the unauthorized use of personal identification information. On April 25, a Macau local woman visited a government designated pharmacy in Taipa. There, she was told that her ID had already been used to buy facemasks from another designated pharmacy. This marked the third time that such a situation had occurred to the same woman, prompting her to make a report to the PJ.
The fourth online scam concerns a Macau local woman in her 30s who works in the financial sector. She became online friends with another person who said he was an engineer from Europe.
The man tried to charm the victim and pursue her, but the woman said she was not deceived. However, later, the same internet friend told the victim that he had mailed her a gift.
She received a message stating that she needed to pay a fee to collect the package. The victim believed the message and transferred a total of HKD74,903 to several different bank accounts. Afterwards, she continued receiving requests to send more money. The victim then realized she had fallen victim to a scam and reported the case to the police authority.
In the fifth online scam, the victim claimed she had become friends with another account user online. The internet friend told her to invest in a wine business by buying shares in the stock market via a specific website. The woman invested 136,500 yuan in total. However, when she eventually planned to sell her stocks, which had already turned a profit, she could not collect the yield or her original investment.
In the sixth case, the victim also became friends with the scammer online. The scammer told the victim that he could win money by betting on a local casino’s website, of which the online friend was an administrator.
In total, the victim bet nearly 400,000 yuan on the website, with all the money being transferred to a mainland bank account. The victim only suspected it to be a scam when he was told to pay 150,000 yuan in order to claim back all his betting money and winnings.
The seventh case is also related to online gambling and is similar to the sixth case. The concerned victim was also told to pay 150,000 yuan to claim the winnings. In this case, the victim lost a total of 55,000 yuan.