A septuagenarian has fallen victim to online investment and email scams, losing a total of 179,600 yuan (203,800 patacas), Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Lou Chan Fai said during a regular press conference yesterday.
According to Lou, the male victim met an online friend through QQ social media in September last year, who persuaded him to make online investments. The victim followed the scammer’s instructions to download an app and invested 2,500 yuan in it which soon purported to show a profit, after which the victim then invested 117,000 yuan in the app.
When he attempted to cash out his investments, the “customer service staff” of the app told him that he could obtain “original shares” of a certain company provided that he transferred an additional 10,000 yuan to the app, and that he could receive an additional 66,800 yuan as a “pension” if he deposited 6,680 yuan. The victim believed it to be true and transferred the money as instructed, but received no response from the app afterwards.
On May 20, the victim received an email from the “China Poverty Alleviation Fund” in his QQ mailbox, which promised that in addition to doing a good deed via donating to the fund, he could also receive millions of yuan in return. The victim believed it and transferred 38,400 yuan to the fund, but soon lost contact with the fund. The victim finally reported the cases to the police on Saturday, saying he had suffered a total loss of 179,600 yuan from the two scams.
