Phone scams return and create more victims

The phone scams targeting residents from the mainland studying or working in Macau have returned, with several cases being reported by the Judiciary Police (PJ) in the last couple of days.

As has happened in the past, the target of at least one of these was a 20-something-year-old university student who fell victim to a scammer on the mainland pretending to be a member of the authorities.

According to the report presented yesterday during the regular joint press conference of the police forces by a PJ spokesperson, the victim received a call on February 10 (Saturday) from someone speaking in Mandarin, who claimed to be from an undisclosed police authority.

The fraudster said that the mainland authorities had caught a suspect and that in his possession was a bank card with the victim’s name, and so they would need to verify all her data.

After that, the fraudster requested the victim to transfer all the money in her bank account to a different account under the pretext of being inspected. After the transfer concluded, the victim soon realized she had lost some RMB12,000, which she had transferred to this unknown account. She reported this to the PJ.

A very similar case was also reported by a different woman, also from the mainland. This time, the amount lost was a total of RMB58,300 from two different bank accounts.

In a separate case that has already resulted in a warning being issued by the PJ over the weekend, the police received four cases of the same scam over the last weekend. The scam involves an SMS being sent, allegedly from a local telecommunications operator.

In this case, the fraudsters contact the victims, claiming to be the telecommunications company. Claiming that their reward program points are expiring soon, the fraudsters instruct the victims to follow a link to “choose the gift they want to exchange for the reward points.”

In the process, victims are asked to fill out a form that requests, among other information, their credit card details. Those who did so soon received a notification from their bank stating that a transaction involving HKD2,378 had been processed via their credit cards.

In three of the four cases reported, local residents saw this same amount being taken via their credit cards. One of the potential victims found the activity suspicious and called the telecommunications company to cancel the transaction before the credit card was charged.

The PJ issued a warning on this scam on Sunday (February 12), fearing that more people could soon be targeted.

All the victims targeted by the scam were clients from the same operator. However, the telecommunications operator has denied sending any of the SMS messages or being in any way involved with this case.