A Hong Kong man was hired by a “guess who I am” telecom fraud gang to travel to Macau to pick up a total of 250,000 patacas separately from a man and a woman, both local elderly, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokeswoman Lei Hon Nei said at a special press conference yesterday.
According to the male victim’s report, Lei said, he received last Thursday a call from a man, claiming to be his “son-in-law”, on his fixed-line telephone at home, telling the victim that he had been arrested for injuring someone and requested he hand 100,000 patacas in cash as bail to a “legal assistant”.
The victim handed the money to a man, the 34-year-old Hong Kong man surnamed Lo, on the ground floor of his residential building in the northern district later that day.
On Friday, the victim received a call from the purported “son-in-law” again, requesting more cash. He gave another 120,000 patacas to another “legal assistant” from the gang.
The victim later called his genuine son-in-law and realised that he had been defrauded, leading him to report the case to the police.
PJ officers reviewed the CCTV footage near his home, and identified Lo as the suspect who picked up the money last Thursday.
Lo re-entered Macau on Tuesday and was placed under surveillance. In the afternoon of the same day, he was intercepted while attempting to leave Macau via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge checkpoint, where the police found 150,000 patacas on him. Subsequently, the police discovered that a local woman had fallen victim to the same scam tactics and had handed her money to Lo.
Under questioning, Lo, who told the police that he’s jobless, refused to cooperate. Police were still investigating the whereabouts of his accomplice, “the other legal assistant”, at the time of the press conference.
Lo was transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) yesterday, where he faces charges of organised crime and fraud.
Cash in Hong Kong dollars and patacas seized from the Hong Kong suspect is displayed during yesterday’s special press conference at the Judiciary Police (PJ) headquarters in Zape. – Photo: William Chan
