Crime | Phone scams and computer fraud on the rise

A high number of phone scams and instances of computer fraud involving stolen credit card data continue to affect several Macau residents, the Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesperson said yesterday at a joint press conference held at the Public Security Police Force (PSP) facilities.

According to the PJ, just in the last couple of days, there have been reports of at least four cases of this kind, following on from reports over the last few weeks that speak to this trend.

The first two cases were related to a common phone scam that is apparently again on the rise, which, as has been previously noted, continues to find victims in local residents. A local woman (63) and a man (55) were the most recent victims of the scam.

It starts with a phone call from someone trying to impersonate one of the victim’s friends in the so-called “guess who I am” method. After pretending to pass off as a known person, the scammers ask the victims to record their new number, saying that the old one is not active anymore.

The next day, another phone call would arrive from this person, saying that he is in trouble on the mainland due to a case related to prostitution. The scammer calls on their ‘long-lost friend’ to help with money to bail him out of jail.

One woman processed two banking transfers to an account in the mainland which totaled RMB60,000 (30,000 yuan each) on two consecutive days.

She only realized something was not right after the so-called friend called once again asking for another RMB30,000, allegedly to bail out another friend in the same situation.

In the second case, the local man was asked to transfer RMB10,000, also to a mainland account, for the same predicament. In this second case, the man was almost immediately alerted for the scam as the actual friend he thought he was helping called him on the very same day and informed him that he had not changed his number, nor called him to ask for any money.

Concerning the cases of stolen credit card information, the first case reported was from a resident who, while on holiday in Thailand, received four messages on his phone noting a transaction allegedly made through his credit card.

According to the report, three of the amounts were for USD69.99 (around MOP566). He immediately informed the bank and cancelled the credit card.

This course of action unfortunately did not occur with the second case, in which a resident only noted unlawful transactions when he received a credit card statement for a significant period of time.

The man explained to the PJ that this credit card had been acquired in 2014 and was from an account in HKD currency only, which meant he hardly used it.

In fact, according to his records, the last time he had made use of the credit card was back in 2016.

He thus only noted on May 30 this year that there were a bundle of 25 transactions related to online shopping totaling HKD4,684.

He reported the loss of such an amount to the police.