Two women reported separately to the Judiciary Police (PJ) last week that they had been cheated in two separate phone scams with losses totalling over 600,000 patacas, PJ spokesman Ho Chan Nam said at a press conference on Monday.
According to Ho, a female non-resident worker from the mainland reported to the police on Friday that she was cheated in a phone scam out of 188,000 patacas in early September last year. She told the police that she received a call on her smartphone from someone who claimed to be a “bank staff” telling her that there were “some problems” with her credit card which she had used in the mainland. When the victim denied any wrongdoing, the “bank staff” immediately transferred the call first to a purported “Public Security Bureau (PSB) officer” in Beijing and then to a “prosecution officer”. Both told her that her credit card’s personal information was suspected of having been stolen and that it involved a criminal case.
Ho said that the victim provided her bank account information as well as passwords to the “PSB officer” for them to “investigate”. However, she discovered the following day that 188,000 patacas had been withdrawn from her account. She immediately asked the “PSB officer” about it. The officer told her that the police were “reviewing her funding situation”. Afterwards, the victim received no follow-up information about the “investigation”. She finally grew suspicious and reported the case to the police.
Meanwhile, a local woman reported to the Judiciary Police on Saturday that she received a call from the “Public Security Bureau (PSB)” in Shanghai on January 14 claiming that her WeChat account would soon be “frozen” as her account was involved in a criminal case in the mainland. The woman denied the claim but provided her personal data to the “officer”, after which she transferred HK$419,600 to a designated bank account for “investigation”.
The “officer” told her not to tell anyone about the “investigation” as the case was strictly confidential. She was even told to report her whereabouts every day to the “PSB officer”. After the victim received no follow-up information about the “outcome of the investigation” she finally suspected that she had been cheated so she reported the case to the police, according to Ho.
