Two Hong Kong women in their twenties were instructed by a “guess who I am” telecom fraud gang to come to Macau to pick up 150,000 patacas in total from two local seniors on condition of being paid a “commission” of 18,000 patacas, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Ho Chan Nam said at a special press conference yesterday.
According to separate reports by the two local victims, an elderly woman and an elderly man, Ho said, both of them received on Wednesday morning calls from a man claiming to be their “son-in-law” on their fixed-line telephones at home, telling them that he had been arrested for attacking someone and requesting they hand over100,000 patacas and 50,000 patacas in cash, respectively, to a purported legal assistant at their nearby homes in the northern district and the Avenida Horta e Costa area ostensibly for compensation to the injured person at noon that day.
The Judiciary Police, Ho noted, received the report from the female victim after she had received another call from the “son-in-law” later that day, asking her to hand over another 300,000 patacas in cash to another paralegal by claiming that the injured person needed to be hospitalised and undergo surgery.
Upon receiving the report, according to Ho, PJ officers set up surveillance near the female victim’s home, during which the officers caught the suspect surnamed Wong red-handed when she was about to receive the 300,000 patacas in cash from the victim, while intercepting the other suspect surnamed Chau who was about to escape in a cab in the vicinity of the scene.
During yesterday’s special press conference at the PJ headquarters in Zape, Ho identified the two suspects as colleagues working as manicurists. Both had entered Macau on the same day when they collected the money from the two victims.
Under questioning, the duo told the Judiciary Police that they also used the same trick to defraud the male victim out of 50,000 patacas on the same day, adding that they had been promised by the criminal gang a total “commission” of 18,000 patacas to collect the two victims’ money in Macau by claiming that they were legal assistants.
According to Ho, the two suspects were transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) yesterday for further investigation, where they face charges of organised crime and fraud involving a considerably large amount of money.
The Judiciary Police recovered the full amount of 150,000 patacas from the two suspects, Ho noted.
The Judiciary Police urged members of the public once again during the press conference not to make any payments or transfers to others hastily whenever receiving calls from anyone claiming to be a relative, friend or colleague, but to contact the relevant relatives and friends by other means in order to avoid being cheated. Members of the public were also urged to deepen their anti-fraud awareness through the ongoing PJ anti-fraud programme on its WeChat official account.
The two hooded female fraud suspects from Hong Kong are escorted by Judiciary Police (PJ) officers from the PJ headquarters in Zape to a PJ vehicle yesterday. – Photo: Yuki Lei
