Local woman loses RMB6.7 million in online investment scam

A local woman has reportedly been defrauded in a series of online investments, losing a total of RMB6.7 million, the Judiciary Police (PJ) reported on Monday.

The case dates back to October 2021 when the woman filed a complaint with the PJ concerning the scam.

At the time, she said that a few weeks earlier she had joined a training course to teach the participants how to invest in the mainland. She said that in this course she met one of the teachers who introduced her to a third man, who was supposedly an “Investment Master.”

According to instructions from this purported investment master, the woman bought stocks on the Chinese stock exchange and almost immediately earned some RMB50,000.

At this point, the same man also introduced her to a mobile application called “Sports Lottery” which she could use to continually increase her investment earnings.

At the end of October 2021, she finally decided to make a large investment. According to the information provided, she transferred a total of RMB6.7 million into an account on the mainland.

After some transactions using this Sports Lottery platform, she noted that instead of earning, she had lost almost all her money and she had a balance of only RMB1.6 million. Fearing the loss of the remaining cash, she attempted withdraw the money using the app, but the system did not allow her to do so. At this point, she also realized she had lost contact with the investment master who had introduced her to the app and was giving her tips on how to use it.

After the PJ received her complaint and opened an investigation, the PJ managed to identify a local resident, who is a 27 year old male restaurant worker, as one of the individuals involved in the scam. The investigation found that some of the money that the woman had transferred to the mainland had passed through one of his accounts.

According to what the PJ could ascertain, some RMB180,000 had been transferred to this man.

The suspect refused to cooperate with the PJ when taken in for questioning, and did not reveal any details of the case or elaborate on his involvement. However, further investigations into the suspect’s bank accounts revealed that of the RMB180,000, some RMB130,000 had been already transferred into other accounts on the mainland while only RMB50,000 remained in his account.

The suspect has been referred to the Public Prosecutions Office to be charged for high value fraud.