A local woman was cheated out of HK$106,700 in a phone scam in which the callers were impersonating a police officer and a public prosecutor from the mainland, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Lai Chio Hong said at a regular press conference on Wednesday.
According to Lai, the female victim in her twenties reported to the police on Wednesday that she had received a phone call on August 19 in which the caller claimed that her smartphone was linked to a mainland phone number involved in a fraud case. The victim denied the claim.
The caller then told her that her mainland smartphone number might have been hacked, and transferred the call to the “Public Security Bureau in Beijing”. A “police officer” claiming to be surnamed Zhao told the victim that she was involved in a fraud case, telling her to contact him on another chat software and report to him on a regular basis.
Lai said the “police officer” called the victim on August 21 to tell her that he would arrange for a “public prosecutor” to contact her. Soon after a man who claimed that he was a public prosecutor surnamed Chen called her, telling the victim he could personally vouch for prioritising the case. However, he also instructed the victim to provide 80 percent of the funds in her bank account as a “guarantee”.
The “public prosecutor” gave the victim a bank account number in Hong Kong for her to deposit the “guarantee”. The victim followed the instruction to transfer HK$71,000 to the account. Later, the “public prosecutor” called again and asked her to transfer another 159,000 yuan as a “deposit”, but the victim told him that she did not have enough money.
After discussing the issue with the “public prosecutor”, the victim transferred HK$26,000 on September 1 and another HK$9,700 on September 14. Afterwards the victim was unable to contact neither the “public prosecutor” nor the “police officer” so she suspected that she had been deceived and reported the case to the police. She incurred a total loss of HK$106,700, according to Lai.
