In separate cases, two women from the mainland fell victim to “fake police” scams and have been defrauded out of a total of over 80,300 yuan (95,100 patacas), Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Leng Kam Lon said at a regular press conference yesterday.
The first victim is a university student in her twenties, while the second victim is a non-resident worker (NRW).
According to Leng, the university student received a call on Friday from a man speaking Putonghua claiming that he was a police officer from the Immigration Department. The “police officer” told the woman that a bank card registered in her name had been seized and found to be involved in a money laundering case in the mainland.
Leng said that the call was then transferred to another “police officer” from the mainland, who then demanded that she provide her bank account details and transfer her money to a “security account” given by the scammer, which the victim did. The “police officer” then demanded she go to Zhuhai with all the cash she had on hand and deposit it into a bank account. When the victim was leaving Macau later on Friday, she suddenly realised, according to Leng, that she might have been scammed and reported the case to the police.
Meanwhile, the second victim fell for a similar scam, where a “police officer” demanded on Friday that she download a communication software so that the “police” could “handle the case” in a video call. The victim provided her personal information and bank account details to the scammer, after which she discovered that 58,300 yuan had vanished from her bank account. She subsequently reported the case to the police.
Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Leng Kam Lon looks on during yesterday’s regular press conference.
– Photo: William Chan
