Four local senior citizens have recently fallen victims to the notorious “guess who I am” phone scams, and cheated out of a total of 270,000 patacas, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Lei Chi Hou said yesterday, adding that PJ officers arrested on Monday two 17-year-old Hongkongers – a male and a female – for collecting the fraudulently obtained money from the four victims.
According to yesterday’s special press conference, the three victims – a male and three females – received calls between May 20 and May 27 from scammers purporting to be their sons-in-law, requesting cash needed “to settle a dispute with someone whom they had injured”.
Lei noted that the victims, respectively, handed over 200,000 patacas, 20,000 patacas, 40,000 patacas and 10,000 patacas to a man claiming to be a lawyer surnamed Chan and a woman claiming to be a paralegal, at their homes in the Barrier Gate, Areia Preta and Avenida de Horta e Costa areas.
The Judiciary Police, Lei said, identified the “lawyer” and “paralegal” as the male jobless suspect and female student surnamed Yeung and Lai respectively, adding that the teenagers had left Macau last Friday after collecting 200,000 patacas from one of the victims, and re-entered Macau on Monday for another cash collection attempt.
Lei noted that PJ officers arrested the duo on Monday separately at the Barrier Gate checkpoint and in the vicinity of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge (HZMB) checkpoint.
Lei said that the officers seized a total of 8,900 yuan, mobile phones and tablet computers from them.
Under questioning, according Lei, the duo admitted to having been promised a total of HK$12,000 by a Hong Kong fraud gang to collect their victims’ money in cash in Macau, convert it into yuan or Hong Kong dollars and hand it over to gang members in Zhuhai or Hong Kong.
The duo were transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) yesterday, facing charges of money laundering, organised crime and fraud involving a large sum of money.
Macau’s age of criminal responsibility begins at 16.
Meanwhile, Lei said that since last year, the Judiciary Police received total of 91 reports involving “guess who I am” scams, with a total loss of about 6.09 million patacas, adding that among the reports, the police have so far solved 27 and arrested 36 suspects, 15 of them Hongkongers.
Lei said during the press conference that the Judiciary Police and the Hong Kong Police Force were in contact about the case, and were continuing to carry out extensive investigations into the “guess who I am” scams.
Judiciary Police (PJ) officers escort the two hooded fraud suspects from the PJ headquarters in Zape to a vehicle yesterday. – Photo: Yuki Lei
