A middle-aged local woman lost 60,475 patacas in an online scam, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Lei Chi Hou said during a regular press conference yesterday.
The victim reported the case to the police on Saturday last week.
On Friday last week, Lei said, the victim received a message in her mobile game’s chatroom from a stranger who expressed an interest in buying her gaming account for HK$8,000, to which she agreed. The next day, the victim followed the purported buyer’s instructions to set up an account on a trading platform, after which the purported buyer told her that he or she had transferred the HK$8,000 to her account.
However, Lei said, when the victim tried to withdraw the money from the trading platform, she discovered that her account had been “frozen” and immediately contacted the platform’s “customer service”. A “customer service agent” told her that she would have her account “unfrozen” after buying game top-up cards* and uploading photos showing the cards’ information to the platform, and promised that the cost of the game cards would be refunded to her once the process was complete.
According to Lei, the woman believed what the “customer service agent” said. Eventually, the victim bought 25 game top-up cards in total from a convenience store, each worth 2,419 patacas, but she still did not have her account “unfrozen”.
The woman finally realised that she had been defrauded, losing 60,475 patacas in total, and reported the case to the police, Lei said.
*Game top-up cards are prepaid vouchers (physical or digital) that contain a specific monetary value or a set amount of in-game currency. Players redeem these cards to add credit to their gaming account or wallet, which can then be used to make purchases within a game or on a gaming platform. - DeepSeek
Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Lei Chi Hou looks on during yesterday’s regular press conference. – Photo: Tony Wong
