Crime | Scams continue to find victims in ‘obedient’ university students

Despite the constant appeals from the Judiciary Police (PJ) and the numerous seminars held by the force, university students in Macau, namely the ones arriving from the mainland, continue to be “easy prey” for scammers that operate through phone or the internet.
They manage to keep swindling them for large sums of money, the PJ head of the Community Policing and Public Relations Division, Cheang Pou Seong, told media during a special announcement made during police press conference yesterday.
According to Cheang, the number of scammers making use of Internet communication applications and the phone has been growing and most of those targeted are young people studying at local universities.
He also noted that despite the many efforts of the force in creating awareness among such a population group, the PJ has been registering a continuous growing number of cases involving students in the last few weeks; cases that, according to Cheang, are responsible for losses of about MOP9 million.
Questioned by the media as to why he thinks that such victims continue to fall for such scams, he pointed out that “there is a lack of consciousness namely from the students [in general],” and that in the case of the people coming from the mainland, “they are too obedient” regarding following orders from the scammers without questioning them.
The same person took the opportunity to reaffirm the previous appeals made by the police via media or in the seminars held at the local universities, which he noted had been attended by a total of 5,000 students.

Student swindled over ‘blocked’ Taobao account
In one of the cases reported yesterday by the PJ spokesperson, a 30-year-old student from the mainland has reportedly lost RMB32,400 over a claim that her Taobao account had been blocked for misuse.
The case occurred on October 11 around 4 p.m. when she was in class and received a call from an alleged Taobao employee saying that her account had been “frozen” because someone had illegally used it.
The same person asked the woman to transfer all the money from the original account to an allegedly secure one. Trusting such a person, she first transferred some RMB27,400 to the other account and later, by the request of the same person, another RMB5,000.
After that, and while talking with a school colleague, she was told that she had been targeted by a scam, and reported the complaint to the PJ.
In a separate case presented by the same police force, another university student has been swindled out of some RMB35,000 over claims that her travel document had been misused and she could not use it to return to the mainland.
Although the claims from the scammer were that she could not reenter the mainland with the document, she crossed the border anyway to transfer money to an account as requested, depositing a total of RMB35,000 into such an account.
She told the police that she only realized the scam later.

Another 200,000 yuan lost to currency exchange
The PJ spokesperson also reported a case that occurred on October 10 when a woman, after losing all the money she had on her at the casino tables, tried to acquire HKD500,000 more through a man that she had met in the same casino.
According to the suspect, she could get the HKD500,000 by transferring a total of RMB456,250 into an account indicated by him.
On that same day, around 10:30 p.m., they arranged a meeting at the casino, and she transferred RMB200,000, in four different banking transfers of RMB50,000 each.
The man then said that he needed to withdraw the money in Hong Kong dollars from an ATM in the casino, but after a few minutes he claimed to be experiencing problems in making the money withdrawal.
The woman, feeling that she had been scammed, immediately reported the incident to the PJ.
Questioned on the case, the suspect refused to provide information to the police, saying only that he had been hired by a third person to perform the scam.

Fake investment promised 1% return per day
A 50-year-old man has reported to the PJ that he has been involved in a scam that took place on August 28, in which he lost an amount equivalent to around HKD900,000.
He told the PJ that he was approached by two men in a hotel located in the Outer Harbor district and offered the chance to join a high-return investment scheme. The investment would grant him earnings of 1% per day on the capital invested.
As he said he knew one of the men, he decided to invest, handing them a sum of RMB150,000.
After the first few days, everything was going as expected and he had received the first few interest payments.
Then, the men called on him to step-up the investment to receive more earnings and he invested a total sum of RMB850,000.
After the increase in the investment, the victim was said to have lost contact with the men, filing a case at the PJ.
On October 11, the police arrested one of the men involved, who was trying to re-enter the region through the Border Gate checkpoint.
When questioned by the force, the suspect admitted to the crime and said that the money had all been lost at the casino tables.
He has already been presented to the Public Prosecutions Office, where he has been charged with aggravated fraud.