Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Chong Kam Leong said during a regular press conference on Monday that three victims were separately cheated out of a total of over five million patacas between them in fake police scams.
The victims comprise a female from the mainland and a local male, both aged under thirty; and an elderly local female resident, who was scammed out of 4 million patacas. The mainland victim studying at a local university was cheated out of 557,000 yuan (624,000 patacas), while the man was defrauded out of nearly HK$1 million.
In all the cases, the victims received phone calls from individuals claiming to be staff members of a specific mainland bureau in January. The callers made preposterous accusations, alleging that the victims were involved in spreading scandalous SMS messages in the mainland.
Believing the claims to be true, the victims provided their bank account information and passwords for “asset review”, only to find out later that various amounts of money had vanished from their respective accounts, Chong said.
