Resident realizes ‘mainland official’ phone scam after TV propaganda

An unemployed local woman realized that she had fallen prey to a telephone scam, led by false mainland officials, after she learnt about the recent prevalence  of similar deceptions while watching television several days later.
The female victim, aged 24, lost around MOP57,000 in the hoax last Tuesday after she received a call the day before allegedly from a mainland delivery firm. A staff member at the firm told her that her parcel from Beijing to Hong Kong reportedly contained 20 phoney identification cards, which had already been withheld by the police security department.
During another call forwarded to the department, according to local police’s recount, the scammer posed as a public security agent. The scammer then claimed that the mainland authorities had frozen her bank account and that she faced possible accusations for which a maximum imprisonment of ten years applied—unless she kept herself tight-lipped about the phone call. He then offered her a website where the victim found herself listed as wanted, and alongside this was attached her personal information.
It was not until another call she received from a “mainland prosecutor” the following day that she was fully convinced of the accusation. Furthermore, she was told to remit the above sum of money to a “safe bank account” as part of the procedures.
She eventually came to realize that this was a hoax, and sought local police intervention last Saturday. This was after she had watched a television program alerting viewers to a recent rise in the occurrence of mainland phone scams throughout the two special administrative regions. Staff reporter