Two illegal currency exchangers fell victim to a money exchange scam in which the scammers used toilet paper and play money as real banknotes, the Judiciary Police (PJ) reported yesterday.
In the first case, the victim was a mainland resident who works in Macau for an illegal currency exchange service; the suspect was a 25-year-old self-proclaimed businessman from the mainland.
On November 21, the suspect contacted the victim to exchange money into HKD. They made an appointment for later on the same day in a hotel room located in Cotai. Upon meeting, the suspect claimed he had won 180,000 Hong Kong dollars from gambling and wanted to exchange the money for RMB.
As requested by his “customer”, the victim transferred 160,000 yuan into a bank account whose details were provided by the suspect. After the victim transferred the money, the suspect dropped a bag in the bathroom and told the victim that all the Hong Kong dollars were inside the bag. Suspicious of this abnormal drop, the victim called the hotel room’s security to hold the suspect.
The suspect, the security guard, and the victim then returned to the bathroom. There, the victim found that the money inside the bags consisted of just toilet paper.
When he was later questioned by a PJ officer, the suspect refused to admit to his crimes, claiming that there was real money inside the bag. He also refused to cooperate.
In the second case, the suspect was a 51-year-old mainland woman, while the the victim was a mainland man in his twenties who frequently and illegally exchanged currencies inside local casinos.
The victim claims that he was gambling in Macau with his family last week. The victim told the police officers he wanted to exchange 200,000 Hong Kong dollars for a total of 181,500 yuan.
The victim then contacted the suspect who he had met through a chance conversation on the street.
The victim transferred the stipulated amount of RMB to the suspect. The suspect then gave the victim a transparent bag. However, the victim found out that the money inside the bags was play money.
Upon the PJ’s questioning of the suspect, she said that she had been hired by other people for 500 yuan in order to perform the scam.
Both scammers were referred to the prosecution authority under the charge of aggravated fraud involving a large amount.
FOUR LOCALS REPORT
PHONE SCAMS
Four local residents and one non-local student have reported to the police authority that they have fallen victim to phone scams.
In these five reports, all criminals pretended to be members of either mainland China or Macau’s judicial departments.
The scammers were said to have similarly told the victims that they were involved in illegal practices in mainland China, and that they were required to pay a fee in order that the so-called “mainland government” would process their cases.
All four local victims claimed large losses due to the scams. A woman in her twenties claimed a total loss of over 80,000 Hong Kong dollars; another local woman in her twenties reported a total loss of 430,000 Hong Kong dollars; a third woman in her twenties claimed a total loss of 70,000 Hong Kong dollars; a fourth local woman in her fifties, a casino dealer, said she lost 95,000 yuan.
The first self-proclaimed victim said that she had received a scam call on November 21. The scammers posed as mainland police officers and told the victim that she committed crimes in mainland China.
In the second case, the criminals pretended to be civil servants of Macau’s courts, and told the victim that she needed to pay a visit to Fujian in order for her case to be processed.
In the third case, the victim, who is a salesman, said that a fake female police officer purporting to be from the Macau immigration authority defrauded her and that she transferred the money to a mainland bank account.
In the fourth case, the dealer also claimed to have received calls from fake immigration officers.
Compared to these large losses, a mainland student appears to have lost just a “little”, according to the PJ. In his first year of a Masters program in Macau, this student lost 6,400 yuan to scammers who claimed to be police officers from the immigration authority of Macau. They told the victim that he was restricted from leaving the territory due to his crime.
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