A 45-year-old Korean man was detained by the Judiciary Police (PJ) for an alleged investment fraud swindling the equivalent of MOP1.8 million from seven victims, the PJ announced yesterday in a special press conference.
According to the PJ, the case dates back to late 2019, when the man lured the victims through an online video posted on a video-sharing platform, in which he claimed to be able to provide interest of between 0.25% to 1% per day to investors for each USD1,000 (MOP8,086) invested in the scheme.
At that time, the alleged fraudster met with seven alleged victims, six of them from the mainland and one from Hong Kong, who, in total, claim to have lost the equivalent of MOP 1.75 million.
All these appointments with the victims were made in Macau where the man was supposed to have opened a company and was operating the investment scheme.
Later the victims were invited to join a chat group where instructions were given to download a mobile application that would serve as an investment trading platform.
After initially having seen some profits accumulating, the victims then lost the money invested in the scheme and also lost contact with the suspect, filing complaints with the PJ.
After an investigation, the police managed to identify the suspect and also found that the alleged company never existed, being based out of a small office rented temporarily to lure the victims into believing that it was a legitimate business.
The PJ also found that around the same time, the suspect had gambled and lost over HKD4 million in several local casinos.
On April 1, the suspect was finally intercepted when he tried to reenter Macau. He has refused to cooperate with the PJ or to give any testimony to the authorities on the case.
The police authorities suspect that there might be other people involved in the scam as the office was not rented by the suspect but by some other people, residents of the mainland thought to have assisted the suspect now in custody to commit the crimes.
