Three elderly local women were separately cheated last week out of a total of 260,000 patacas by a purported “son” in a “guess who I am” scam, and the Judiciary Police (PJ) arrested a Hong Kong man who had collected the victims’ money in Macau, PJ spokesman Lou Chan Fai said during a special press conference yesterday.
Lou added that the 49-year-old suspect, surnamed Kam, was caught red-handed on Wednesday afternoon when collecting 100,000 patacas from another elderly woman in the northern district.
According to Lou, upon having received separate reports from the victims that they had been defrauded by the “son” who claimed that “he had attacked someone and been told to pay compensation”, PJ officers identified the “lawyer” whom the victims had handed their money to as Kam and put him under surveillance on Wednesday morning when he entered Macau via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge (HZMB) checkpoint.
Lou said that under questioning, Kam, who told the police that he works as a courier, said that as he owes more than HK $100,000 in gambling debts in Hong Kong, he applied to work as a “driver” to collect money in Macau after reading an online recruitment advertisement by a Hong Kong fraud gang, adding that he had so far been paid 26,000 patacas by the gang, based on a “guaranteed commission” of 10 percent of the money he collected in Macau.
Kam was transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) yesterday, facing charges of fraud involving a large amount of money and organised crime.
The hooded male fraud suspect from Hong Kong is escorted by police officers from the Judiciary Police (PJ) headquarters in Zape to a vehicle. – Photo: Yuki Lei
