One more Hongkonger was arrested for assisting a gang in collecting fraudulently obtained money through “guess who I am” phone scams in Macau, in which the 30-year-old man pretending to be a “lawyer” received a total of 280,000 patacas from two local female senior citizens between June 14 and June 16 in the city centre and the northern district respectively, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Cheong Kim Fong said yesterday.
According to yesterday’s special press conference about the case, the two local elderly women fell for the “guess who I am” scams and lost a total of 280,000 patacas after they had received calls on their landlines from purported “grandsons”, claiming that they had been detained by the mainland police for injuring someone and that in order to enable them to be released from custody, they had to handed over, respectively, 250,000 patacas and 30,000 patacas in cash to a “lawyer” who would bail their “grandsons” out.
A PJ investigation, according to Cheong, identified the “lawyer” as a man surnamed Tso, who entered Macau last Friday and returned to Hong Kong the day after, but re-entered Macau on Monday.
The Judiciary Police put Tso under surveillance and arrested him in the city centre on Monday after the second victim had handed 30,000 patacas in cash to him.
In the operation, according to Cheong, PJ officers recovered the 30,000 patacas in cash from the suspect and seized four mobile phones, on which chat records showed how Tso was instructed by the gang to collect the “filthy lucre” in Macau.
Under questioning, Cheong said, the suspect refused to cooperate with the police, insisting that he had received HK$12,500 from a “friend” to collect the cash in Macau for him.
According to Cheong, the gang promised Tso a “commission” of 10 percent of each amount of money he managed to collect from the scam victims.
Cheong noted that the suspect, who told the police that he is jobless, was transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) yesterday, facing organised crimes and fraud involving a considerably large sum of money, as well as money laundering.
According to previous local media reports, the Judiciary Police have caught about a dozen suspects from Hong Kong since last month who were hired by gangs in Hong Kong to collect the proceeds of “guess who I am” scams targeting the elderly in Macau.
Judiciary Police (PJ) officers escort the hooded phone scam suspect from Hong Kong to a police vehicle outside the PJ headquarters in Zape yesterday. – Photo: Yuki Lei
