The government-appointed Central District Social Services Consultative Council conveyed yesterday its regular monthly meeting at the Patane Activity Centre, during which several members expressed concern about the Judiciary Police’s (PJ) anti-fraud efforts in enhancing public awareness.
Civic leader Mok Chio Kuan urged the Judiciary Police to make better use of their “Young Leaders for Community Safety” and “Junior Anti-crime Pioneers” anti-fraud awareness-raising campaigns, proposing to include the participation of “young leaders” and “pioneers” in their production of crime and fraud prevention videos as well as serving as crime and fraud prevention ambassadors in their respective schools, with the aim of strengthening students’ understanding of fraud cases through the interaction and communication between their peers on campus, while enhancing their awareness of self-protection.
Fellow civic leader Leong Wai Kei urged the Judiciary Police to optimise their anti-fraud programmes on their WeChat account “PJ_Macao”, suggesting they include the function of Virtual Private Network (VPN) on their anti-fraud programmes to block suspicious information websites as well as to establish an anti-fraud data-sharing mechanism with their counterparts in the mainland and Hong Kong, so as to detect and identify more suspicious calls and phishing websites.
Wrapping up the remarks by two senior PJ officers during the closed-door meeting, Central District Social Services Consultative Council Deputy Convener Lei Chong In noted during the post-meeting press briefing that the Judiciary Police investigated 96 phone fraud cases in the first quarter of this year, totalling losses of more than 59 million patacas, including 26 million patacas defrauded from 41 students.
Macau has seen an upward trend in phone and online fraud crimes, Lei quoted the PJ officers as saying, with the number of the two kinds of fraud cases having increased, respectively, from 119 in 2019 to 407 last year and from 313 in 2019 to 871 last year, mostly involving online-dating, naked chat and fake police scams, as well as concert tickets and credit card fraud.
Regarding the fact that students accounted for nearly half of the victims, Lei quoted the officers as saying that the Judiciary Police are planning to develop a “Fraud Prevention Test” awareness system, in order to alert students’ parents to the predicament by registered mail, and to enhance young people’s awareness by means of tailor-made publicity through anti-fraud campaign vans and video clips.
In addition, concerning the “PJ_Macao” anti-fraud programme, as cited by Lei, between April and June this year, the programme received a total of about 24,980 hits, adding that between April and May, the usage of the online fraud reporting feature stood at 476 times.
Two senior Judiciary Police (PJ) officers address the government-appointed committee’s regular meeting at the Patane Activity Centre yesterday. – Photo: Yuki Lei
