A local man, a foreign university student studying in Macau and six university students from the mainland separately fell victim to a “fake police” scam and have been defrauded out of 9,700 to 300,000 yuan, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Chan Wun Mam said at a regular press conference on Wednesday.
Chan said the eight cases involved a local resident in his 50s and seven mainland and foreign university students aged around 20.
According to Chan, each of the eight victims received calls claiming to be from a mainland police officer, a Judiciary Police (PJ) officer, a Public Security Police (PSP) officer, and a staff member from the Health Bureau (SSM) respectively.
Chan said the scammers told the victims respectively that they are involved in a money laundering case and asked the victims to download a mobile app to make a video recording for “investigation”.
During the “investigation”, the victims were asked to transfer the total amount of money in their bank accounts to a designated account as a “security deposit”, Chan said, adding that the victims were convinced and transferred their money, but one of them failed to carry out the transaction successfully and realised he or she had been scammed and reported it to the police.
However, Chan said, the other seven victims kept being asked for money even after transferring all their money, and transferred a total of 900,000 patacas, after which the victims started to become suspicious, and called the police for assistance.
The eight cases are currently under investigation.
Macau has recently been hit by wave of “fake police” scams.
