The Judiciary Police (PJ) announced yesterday three more “guess who I am” phone scams, in which a Hong Kong man and a mainland man purporting to be the victims’ “grandsons” separately cheated three local elderly out of a total of 169,000 patacas, PJ spokesman Chao Teng Hin said in a regular press conference yesterday.
The three victims, two females and one male, reported to the police in the past week their separate losses of 15,000 patacas, 100,000 and 54,000 patacas respectively.
The three victims said that they had received calls from their “sons” or “grandsons” who, in the respective cases, told them that they had injured someone and were required to pay “bail”, and the scammers told the victims that someone would collect the money from them, according to Chao.
Chao noted that the victims gave the money to the scammers in the northern district, and only later realised that they had been defrauded and then reported the case to the police.
According to the crime statistics released by the Judiciary Police on Tuesday, the “guess who I am” scam is the second most common type of phone scam in Macau, following the “fake police” scams. In 2024, there were 44 reported cases of the “guess who I am” scam, and over 80 percent of the victims were individuals aged 65 and above, with an average age of 73.8 years.
Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Chao Teng Hin looks on during yesterday’s regular press conference. – Photo: William Chan
