A 19-year-old male local student has swindled at least eight of his classmates out of a total of 110,674 patacas in currency-exchange scams after he had gambled away 90,000 patacas borrowed from friends in mid-2023, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Chong Kam Leong said at a special press conference yesterday.
The Judiciary Police, according to Chong, received separate reports from the victims – a local, six mainlanders and a South American – between February and this month about their losses, saying that they had been defrauded of money ranging from 33,000 to 53,000 patacas between January and April by the suspect claiming to be able to change patacas into yuan for them.
Chong said that PJ investigations identified the suspect as a university student surnamed Tong, who had a gambling habit, betting on ball games, and running up debts with various friends. Chong pointed out that the suspect’s modus operandi was to first join several of his university’s chat groups, take the initiative to get in touch with people who wanted to exchange currencies and instruct them to transfer the money to several payment platforms in the mainland or local bank accounts. After receiving the money from the victims, Chong added, Tong delayed the transfers to them on the pretext that the transactions were rejected as he had exceeded his daily transaction limit, or that his bank account had been frozen, while also showing the victims a forged transfer screenshot to gain their trust.
Chong noted that the suspect has no income and was unable to assist in the exchange of the currency, adding that whenever any of the victims threatened to call the police, the suspect returned their money to them after he defrauded a new victim, so as to discourage them from reporting their cases to the police.
The Judiciary Police arrested Tong in the northern district on Monday. He was transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) yesterday, facing charges of fraud involving a considerably large amount of money and computer forgery, Chong noted.
The hooded local male university student suspected of fraud and computer forgery is escorted by Judiciary Police (PJ) officers to a PJ vehicle outside the PJ headquarters in Zape after yesterday’s press conference about the case. – Photo: Yuki Lei
