Judiciary Police (PJ) spokeswoman Lei Hon Nei said during a regular press conference on Monday that 11 victims had been scammed out of a total of 6.3 million patacas between them in fake police scams.
The victims, four male and seven female, comprise four non-locals and seven locals, eight of them aged thirty while the other three are elderly residents.
According to Lei, one of the local male victims fell victim to a scam and lost HK$2.43 million. In this case, the victim received phone calls from individuals claiming to be staff members of a specific mainland bureau in October of last year. The callers made preposterous accusations, alleging that the victim was involved in financial crimes. Believing the claims to be true, the victim disclosed his bank account information, passwords, and transferred money to a designated account for “asset review.”
In November, a “mainland police officer” contacted the victim again, claiming that the victim’s “innocence” had been proven but required the payment of a “security deposit” in order to return the funds. When the victim told the fraudster that he had no money left, the scammer requested that he borrow HK$320,000 from his bank, which he did. It was when the scammer demanded he mortgage his flat that his family members told him that he was being scammed, after which he finally reported the case to the police.
