Judiciary Police (PJ) spokeswoman Lei Hon Nei said during a special press conference on Saturday that a local female university student fell victim to a phone scam, in which a scammer purporting to be “an officer of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau (PSB)” transferred 170,000 patacas from the victim’s bank account after claiming that “she had been engaged in a serious criminal case in the mainland”.
According to Lei, the victim in her twenties reported to the police that she had received a call from a “PSB officer” last Tuesday, pointing out that during the call, the “officer”, who had mentioned her name and ID card number, requested she turn on the video call and mobile screen sharing function for “questioning” and “investigation”. The victim told the police that after turning on the video call, a uniformed “PSB officer” showed her his work ID card and displayed an “arrest warrant” printed with her personal information, requiring her to cooperate in the investigation “under strict confidentiality”.
Lei pointed out that as instructed by the “officer”, the victim went to a bank to open the online banking function, and later handed over her bank account details and verification code to the “officer” after transferring 170,000 patacas on several occasions from her other bank accounts to the one requested by the “officer”.
The case was only discovered by a bank staff member when the victim deposited 800,000 patacas in cash, which her mother had kept at their home, into the designated bank account at a bank branch in the northern district, Lei said, adding that as a raft of suspicious remittances from the victim’s bank account had been made recently, the bank staff asked the victim about the purpose of the 800,000-patacas cash deposit, after which the bank notified the victim’s family and reported the case to the Judiciary Police.
Meanwhile, another PJ spokesman said at Saturday’s press conference that in the first nine months of this year the police had received 73 phone scam reports from students, most of them mainlanders, involving more than 21 million patacas.
Judiciary Police (PJ) spokeswoman Lei Hon Nei (left) and an unnamed PJ spokesman give a special press conference about another phone fraud case involving a university student, at the PJ headquarters in Zape on Saturday. – Photo courtesy of TDM
