Two local men were arrested on Monday at their homes in the northern district and Praça de Ponte e Horta respectively for assisting a telephone fraud gang in setting up GSM gateways connecting a “call centre”, which the gang set up offshore, at a residential flat in Taipa, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Leng Kam Lon said during a special press conference yesterday.
GSM stands for Global System for Mobile Communications.
According to Leng, the Judiciary Police believe that the gang purporting to be Macau government officials has cheated at least 45 people out of 23 million patacas since the beginning of this year in phone scams using Macau’s mobile phone network. Among the victims, 26 were university students.
Leng said that the two suspects in their thirties, surnamed Wong and Yu, told the police that they work as a lorry driver and own an engineering company respectively.
In the first quarter of this year, Leng said, the Judiciary Police launched a total of 85 investigations into telephone fraud and later set up a special team to follow up on such scams. Leng added the Judiciary Police found out that the phone calls were made via GoIP gateways from a residential flat in Taipa, and later identified Wong and Yu as members of the fraud gang.
In the operation, according to Leng, the police seized four gateway devices from the flat, as well as a number of routers and a web camera, as well as several smart plugs that could be used as receivers of remote-controlled devices
A PJ investigation confirmed that the gang used the gateway devices to make phone calls from overseas to their targets in Macau through the local mobile phone network, Leng said, adding that the gang used 3,500 phone cards, of which 2,000 were local phone numbers, to make at least 1.74 million fraudulent calls, defrauding at least 45 people out of as much as 23 million patacas.
Leng pointed out that all the money obtained from the victims has been transferred to overseas bank accounts.
Under questioning, Wong admitted that he had received about 10,000 patacas from the gang to set up and maintain the “fraud” devices at the flat since February, while Yu, who had been paid 2,000 patacas by the gang, confessed that he had rented the flat since January this year to install the gateway devices, according to Leng.
Leng said that the two suspects were transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) yesterday, facing charges of fraud involving a considerable amount of money and organised crime.
Leng said that the Judiciary Police are continuing their investigation to track down other possible suspects.
Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Leng Kam Lon (centre) and four senior PJ officers address yesterday’s special press conference about the telephone fraud gang, with various items of evidence, such as cash, mobile phones, smart plugs and several routers, displayed in a pressroom of the PJ headquarters in Zape yesterday. – Photo: Yuki Lei
