A local man and a university student from the mainland separately fell victim to a “fake police” scam and have been defrauded out of 10,000 patacas and 226,000 yuan (265,000 patacas) respectively, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Ho Chan Nam said at a regular press conference on Monday.
According to Ho, the student received a call on Saturday from a man claiming that he was an officer from the “Guangdong Communication Administration”. The scammer told the student that her personal information had been stolen, Ho said, adding that the fraudster told the victim that a bank account registered in her name had been involved in money laundering and other illegal activities.
Ho said that the call was then transferred to a “police officer” from the mainland, who requested she transfer certain amounts of money to bank accounts for “investigation” purposes. The victim then transferred a total of 226,000 yuan 11 times to several mainland bank accounts. The victim finally realised that she had been scammed and called the police for assistance.
In the second case, the male victim was cheated out of 10,000 patacas in a similar way by fraudsters who claimed to be a Public Security Police (PSP) officer from Macau and a police officer from Xiamen, according to Ho.
Two other university students also reported to the Judiciary Police that they had faced fake police scams, but did not lose any money, Ho said.
Macau has recently been hit by wave of “fake police” scams.
