The Judiciary Police (PJ) prevented two local residents from transferring money to fraudsters after they were suspected of falling victim to “fake police” scams, successfully blocking one of the victims from transferring HK$1.5 million, PJ spokesman Cheong Kim Fong said during a regular press conference yesterday.
According to Cheong, the PJ Anti-Fraud Coordination Centre identified the two suspected victims through intelligence analysis on September 16 and 17. The victims are a middle-aged man and a middle-aged woman.
PJ officers attempted to contact them several times by telephone and text message but were unable to reach them. Officers subsequently sent anti-fraud information through multimedia messages and social media, while also seeking assistance from the victims’ family members.
The two victims eventually realised that they had been deceived after seeing the anti-fraud information and speaking with their family members, Cheong said.
In the first case, Cheong said that officers identified the male victim at about 4:30 p.m. on September 16 as a suspected victim of a “fake police” scam. Police immediately froze his bank account, but he had not yet initiated any transfer and therefore suffered no financial loss.
In the second case, officers identified the female victim at about 2:30 p.m. on September 17 and immediately froze her bank account, successfully preventing her from transferring HK$1.5 million to the scammers.
When police located the two victims, the man was hiding at his company while the woman was hiding in a hotel, according to Cheong. Both had followed the scammers’ instructions to hide themselves and had activated their mobile phones’ screen-sharing functions while logging into their online banking accounts, Cheong added.
Cheong also said no money had been transferred from either bank account, meaning both victims avoided financial losses.
Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Cheong Kim Fong looks on during yesterday’s regular press conference at the PJ headquarters in Zape. – Photo: Sherwin Hng
