2 local victims cheated out of 5.7 million patacas
The Judiciary Police (PJ) urged the public to be wary of an ongoing “phishing” scam involving a bogus web version of a genuine chat software, which recently defrauded two local victims out of 5.7 million patacas.
TechTarget defines phishing websites as “a domain similar in name and appearance to an official website”
PJ spokesman Chong Kam Leong said during a special press conference yesterday that in one of the two cases, a female local victim who had the habit of using the web version of chat software to receive instructions from her supervisor lost four million patacas in the scam, in which she had been asked by her “supervisor” via the bogus “chat software” for the four-million pataca remittance after she had logged into her account.
In the other case, a local female victim was defrauded out of 1.7 million patacas, using the same approach, by “her relatives” via the “chat software”, Chong added.
According to Chong, a separate PJ investigation confirmed that the two victims had separately used a search engine to click accidentally into the bogus web version of a certain chat software, which they logged into their account with their mobile phones by scanning the QR code shown on the webpage. During the process, Chong pointed out, the permission of the victims’ individual accounts of the relevant communication software was stolen, which enabled the fraudsters to spy on the communication and chat records with others in their daily work and life, while defrauding them with the purported accounts of their “supervisor” and “relatives” respectively.
The Judiciary Police underlined that apart from the website address, the interface design of the fake website was basically the same as that of the real one and, therefore, members of the public should always stay vigilant against such scams by carefully verifying the authenticity of the website address and further confirming the identity of those who request any transfers, remittances or payments via the internet as the top results of well-known search engines can also turn out to be fake sites.
Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Chong Kam Leong (left) and unnamed PJ official pose during yesterday’s special press conference warning the public to be wary of an ongoing phishing scam involving the bogus web version of a genuine chat software.
– Photo: Yuki Lei
