A male and a female non-resident worker (NRW) have separately fallen for online investment fraud involving a total loss of over 420,000 yuan (471,000 patacas), Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Ho Chan Nam said in a regular press conference on Monday.
According to Ho, the female victim in her thirties reported to the police on June 13 that she met a man on the social media platform Douyin on May 11, after which they became virtual friends. The victim was persuaded by her virtual friend on May 23 to download two applications on her phone to invest in cryptocurrency.
Initially, the victim invested 5,000 yuan and quickly earned a profit of more than 1,400 yuan, which she successfully withdrew. Seeing the potential for more profit, the victim later invested a total of over 165,000 yuan in early June. When she attempted to withdraw the money on June 13, the “customer service” of the app said that an error had occurred, while she also lost contact with her virtual friend. Finally realising that she had been scammed, the victim reported the case to the police.
In the second case, the male victim told the police that he enrolled in a purported online investment course last month. The “course instructor”, also male, claimed to have a “special method” to buy stocks online that guaranteed “zero risk.” He persuaded the victim to buy stocks through his company, assuring him that any losses would be covered, and if there was a profit, the victim would have to pay the company 30 percent of the amount before withdrawing the remainder.
The victim believed the claim and deposited a total of 240,000 yuan into an account designated by the “course instructor” earlier this month. A few days later, he saw that his investment account had earned 84,000 yuan and attempted to withdraw it by first paying 25,000 yuan, 30 percent of the purported profit, as instructed by the “customer service” of the company, after which he lost contact with the “course instructor” and the company. The victim suspected that he had been cheated and reported a loss of 265,000 yuan to the police, Ho said.
