Crime | Resident scammed HKD364,000 over online date

A local resident was reportedly scammed by a man she met through an online social networking app that resulted in a loss of almost HKD364,000, the Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesperson informed yesterday at a press conference.

The woman, a widow who works in a valet parking service of a local hotel, told the PJ that a few months back she had met a man named Steve over the internet, with which she used to chat frequently.

The man told her he wanted to give her a gift and requested her address and phone contact, which she granted to him.

Some time later the woman received a call from a person claiming to be an employee from a parcel deliver company, who said that a parcel with her address and contact was in their possession but that it could not be shipped with a payment. The caller asked the victim to pay an amount of USD2,200 (around HKD17,300), which needed to be transferred into a bank account.

The victim accepted and transferred the requested amount. However, on the very next day she received a second call from the same person saying that the parcel had been stopped by Hong Kong Customs who demanded a tax be paid in the amount of USD5,000 (around HKD39,250), which she had to transfer into the same account as on the previous day.

The woman, who continued to engage in conversations with the alleged man that shipped the parcel, accepted and transferred the money.

On the same day, the man told her he was finalizing some investment deal in Thailand and needed HKD40,200 to complete the process, requesting such amount from the woman.

The process continued with the man finding excuses related to the deal to request once more an amount of over HKD110,000.

Suspicions aroused, the woman asked to meet the man who claimed to be staying in Bangkok at that moment.

He accepted and the woman flew to Bangkok but failed to meet the man in the pre-arranged location, instead she received a call from the man asking for the equivalent of USD20,000 in Thai baht, which she transferred to him before finally losing contact and realizing she had been scammed.

After returning to Macau, the woman filed the complaint with the PJ, which is now investigating the case.

In a separate case reported by the Public Security Police Force (PSP) at the same press conference, a local taxi driver is accused of “illegal appropriation”.

The case was filed by the victim on May 4, when a local man called the PSP saying that he had just left a mobile phone in the lavatories of a gas station located at Avenida da Amizade a few minutes back and he could not find it anymore.

The police sent officers to the location that inspected the closed circuit television system (CCTV) and detected a man that only one minute after the victim left the lavatories, parked his taxi outside the gas station and entered the lavatories.

Starting the investigation, the PSP found later that day the taxi driver in the taxi wait lane of the border gate, taking him in for questioning.

The man admitted to having found the mobile phone but denied the appropriation, saying that he had the intention to take it to the police after he finished his work.

The police said they believe that the man had no such intentions and have accordingly forwarded the case to the Public Prosecutions Office.