Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Lei Chi Hou said during a regular press conference yesterday that a local male student studying at a university in the mainland has been cheated out of 728,000 patacas in a phone scam.
According to Lei, on Tuesday at 8 p.m., PJ officers received a report that the complainant suspected that his son, who studies in the Chinese mainland, was being targeted by a “fake police” scam. The case unravelled when his son called his dad around last Tuesday, claiming that he needed 500,000 patacas as a “course enrolment deposit” for operating expensive lab equipment.
Lei said that the complainant, initially unsuspecting, transferred the funds to his son’s Macau bank account. By 4 p.m. on Tuesday, upon reviewing the passbook during a routine bank statement update, the student’s father discovered that 728,000 patacas (500,000 patacas from the father and 228,000 patacas from his son) had been split into eight remittances to a Hong Kong bank account.
According to Lei, the bank staff alerted the complainant about the possibility of being the victim of a scam. Upon immediately calling his son in the Chinese mainland, he learnt that his son had received a call from the “police” claiming that his phone number was linked to criminal activities. The “police” demanded a “bail payment” and instructed him to fabricate the “course enrolment deposit” story to extract funds from his parents – ultimately resulting in the transfer of 728,000 patacas to the fraudsters.
Lei said that the son has meanwhile filed a report with mainland police as the bank froze the compromised account and launched cross-border interception efforts, although recovery of the 728,000 patacas remained uncertain pending further investigation by local and mainland police.
Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Lei Chi Hou looks on during yesterday’s regular press conference. – Photo: Armindo Neves
