A local woman was cheated by a mainland man out of 2,819,589 yuan (3.53 million patacas) in an investment scam, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokeswoman Lei Hon Nei said at a press conference on Wednesday.
According to Lei, a local woman reported to the Judiciary Police on Tuesday that she had been cheated by a mainland man out of over 2.8 million yuan since 2017. The victim told the police that about three years ago she was looking for opportunities to work in the mainland and downloaded a job search app on her smartphone in October 2017.
She met a male netizen in the app who added her as a friend. The netizen claimed to be engaged in the real estate and construction sector in the mainland. He urged the victim to meet him in Guangzhou for an interview if she was interested in working in the sectors. The victim said she later met the man in Guangzhou, after which she returned to Macau.
Lei said the man contacted the victim after two months and told her that there was a real estate investment project with a return on investment (ROI) as high as 20 percent and urged the victim to invest in the project. The victim initially transferred 200,000 yuan into a mainland bank account provided by the man. However, the man later claimed that as the company was about to go bankrupt it was requesting refinancing, and asked the victim to inject more capital.
The victim later transferred a total of 2,619,589 yuan to the man in a several remittances.
The victim never received any return on her investment. As she was unable to contact the man she went to Guangzhou for a face-to-face meeting. According to the victim, the man repeatedly failed to keep his promise to pay her back the money.
The victim finally realised that she had been defrauded and reported the case to the police, according to Lei.
