A middle-aged non-local woman fell victim to a table tennis competition ticket scam in which she lost 160,000 yuan (186,000 patacas), PJ spokesman Leng Kam Lon said during a regular press conference yesterday.
According to Leng, during a trip to Macau on Sunday, the victim came across a post on “Xianyu” (Goofish) selling table tennis competition tickets.
The spokesperson did not identify the specific competition, only stating that it was a recently held table tennis event.
A seven-day table tennis competition – the ITTF Men’s and Women’s World Cup Macao 2026 – was held by the Macau Sports Bureau (ID) between March 30 and this past Sunday at Galaxy Arena in Cotai.
According to DeepSeek, Xianyu (闲鱼) is a Chinese consumer-to-consumer (C2C) second-hand goods trading platform owned by Alibaba.
Leng said that the victim contacted the seller via message app QQ and agreed to purchase one ticket for 1,280 yuan, scanned a QR code provided by the seller to transfer the payment and filled in her personal information.
However, the seller fraudulently claimed that the transfer had failed due to incorrect information provided by the victim, and told her to contact the purported “customer service” for a refund.
The “customer service” told the victim that verifying the account’s transaction history was necessary for the refund, according to Leng.
Following the “customer service” instructions, the victim repeatedly transferred money back and forth among her three mainland bank accounts, Leng said, adding that she transferred a total of 160,000 yuan to several mainland bank accounts specified by the “customer service”.
Hours later, Leng said, the victim had still not received any refund and the “customer service” became unreachable. Suspecting that she had been defrauded, the victim reported the case to the Judiciary Police on Monday, according to Leng.
