A female university student was cheated out of 10,200 yuan (11,780- patacas) in an online currency exchange scam in July, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Lai Chio Hong said during a regular press conference yesterday.
According to Lai, the victim, who is in her twenties, reported to the Judiciary Police on Saturday that she had been defrauded in an online scam. She told the police that she studied abroad and joined a chat group for international students four years ago. One of the members of the group offered to help her exchange foreign currency at a favourable rate. The victim contacted the person on July 1 and both agreed on a rate of 8,600 yuan for £1,000, after which the transaction was completed online.
Lai did not mention the gender of the suspect.
According to Lai, the victim contacted the person again on July 2 and requested to exchange once more 8,600 yuan for £1,000.
After the victim transferred the yuan into the suspect’s account, the suspect told the victim that she would have to wait for 21 days to get the pounds. She never received the money. On July 15, the suspect told her that he or she urgently needed to buy yuan and asked her to transfer 1,600 yuan into the suspect’s account, while promising that another person would transfer US$200 into her account. Yesterday’s rate was US$200 for 1,382 yuan.
According to Lai, the victim discovered that the US$200 transfer had been returned to the sender on August 3, while she had already transferred 1,600 yuan to the suspect’s account. When the victim tried to contact the suspect to find out what had happened, she discovered that many other members of the chat group had failed to receive their money after sending money to the suspect. She suspected that she was the victim of online fraud and reported the case to the police.
PJ officers are following up on the case to investigate if there are other possible victims, and no-one had been arrested at the time of the press conference, Lai said.
