Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Leng Kam Lon said during a regular press conference on Wednesday that a local female student studying at a university in the mainland had been cheated out of 210,000 yuan in a phone scam, while her bank account in Macau was also used by scammers to collect fraudulent funds.
The 19-year-old victim told the Judiciary Police on Monday that when she was in the mainland on March 24, she received a call from a person claiming to be an official of the mainland’s State Post Bureau, claiming that “she was involved in publishing illegal information on the internet”, and the call was purportedly transferred to the “Public Security Bureau (PSB) in Shenzhen”. Afterwards, a “PSB officer” told the victim that she had been involved in a number of fraud cases, asking her to provide her mainland bank account details, while also instructing her to transfer all the money in her account to a bank account designated by the “officer”, according to Leng, who added that the victim reported a loss of 210,000 yuan.
In the process, Leng said the “officer” also required the victim to provide her Macau bank account details to receive HK$55,000, which the victim was asked to transfer to a Hong Kong bank account designated by the “officer”.
On April 24 when the victim returned to Macau as instructed to transfer the money, she was informed by the bank that as her account was suspected of being involved in money laundering, it had been frozen, according to Leng.
Suspecting that she had fallen for a scam, the victim reported the case to the police, Leng said.
Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Leng Kam Lon looks on during Wednesday’s regular press conference at the PJ headquarters in Zape. – Photo: Yuki Lei
