The Judiciary Police (PJ) urged the public on Friday to be wary of phone scams in which callers purport to be officials from the Health Bureau (SSM).
According to a PJ statement, residents have reported to the Judiciary Police that they received a call with the code “00” in which the caller speaking Putonghua claimed that he or she was a staff member of the Health Bureau.
The statement pointed out that the “staff member” also claimed that according to the receivers’ “mainland phone number” they had been to the same place as a confirmed COVID-19 case so they needed to be quarantined, or they had committed an offence related to the mainland’s COVID-19 pandemic prevention and control measures, and claiming that their personal data was suspected of having been stolen, the call was transferred to the “mainland police”. Those receiving the bogus calls were also required to download a mobile app for future video calls.
During the call, the statement added, the “mainland police” told the residents that they were implicated in a case involving a huge amount of money and asked for their ID number and telephone number for verification.
The Judiciary Police strongly urged the public to be vigilant against phone scams and not to trust calls by strangers claiming to be officials.
The statement underlined that in the course of an epidemiological investigation conducted by the Health Bureau, the government will always provide the receiver of the call with his or her personal data for verification, rather than asking him or her to provide their personal data, adding that if members of the public receive similar calls, especially requests for personal data such as identification data and bank account numbers, the immediate transfer of the call to other “government authorities”, or even requests to provide information on their financial status or instructions for a money transfer, they should immediately hang up to stop the criminals from taking the opportunity to obtain their personal data or cheat them out of money.
This poster provided by the Judiciary Police (PJ) on Friday urges the public to be wary of bogus phone calls from the “Health Bureau”.
