Two women fall victim to phone scams

Two women have fallen victim to phone scams, resulting in financial loss and coercion to conceal themselves in Zhuhai to assist in further fraudulent activities, the Judiciary Police (PJ) disclosed.

However, as of yesterday, no suspects have been arrested.

On Mar. 4, a local university reported to the police that a mainland student at the university had gone missing. The police were told that the student had contacted her family before going missing. She told her family that she was having an emergency and urged her family not to contact her.

Preliminary investigations confirmed that the victim had departed Macau for mainland China. The local police requested assistance from their mainland counterparts, who found the victim in a hotel in Zhuhai on the same night.

The mainland police later confirmed that the victim was seeking funds for scammers. The hotel was the hiding spot designated by the scammers. The victim did not lose any money.

On Mar. 25, another local resident reported a case to the police. The complainant told the police that their daughter, who went to school in Guangzhou, had lost contact with them. The complainant believed that she had fallen victim to a scam.

Before ceasing contact, the victim requested RMB300,000 from her parents, saying that she needed the money to study abroad. That afternoon, the bank informed the complainant that RMB200,000 had been wired out from the victim’s account.

Police investigations discovered that the victim had returned to Macau for a brief stay, before returning to the mainland and disappearing.

The mainland police found the victim in a hotel in Zhuhai the same night. The victim reported sending RMB200,000 to the fraudsters, and was about to send another sum when she was discovered.

The local police reiterated that no law enforcement authority will request a Macau resident to testify as a witness outside of Macau, or conceal themselves in a hotel room. Video interrogation is also not standard practice, the police added.