Scam alert: Chinese police warn of fake Hongkongers fleecing Good Samaritans
- Shenzhen officers arrest gang posing as distressed visitors in need of emergency money
Police in the southern Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen have warned residents to be on alert for scammers pretending to be Hongkongers needing money for an emergency.
“They are very good at acting … and their favourite character is a Hongkonger in need,” police from Shenzhen in Guangdong province said in an online statement on Thursday.
Officers said five scammers were arrested in December after a woman surnamed Ma reported being deceived by a couple whom she thought was from Hong Kong.
Ma said she was walking home from work one night in September when two well-dressed but distress strangers ran up to her and asked for help in Cantonese-accented Mandarin.
The couple said they had accidentally hit a pedestrian with their car and needed money to send the pedestrian to hospital. She immediately transferred 2,700 yuan (US$400) to an online account and the pair left after giving her a phone number.
Ma later began to have doubts and dialled the number but could not reach the couple. She then called the police, who investigated and concluded that the crime was the work of a gang.
Police said scammers also pretended to be Hongkongers who had lost their way or dropped their wallet.
The amount of money scammed ranged from 20 yuan to over 10,000 yuan, the police said.
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Police have arrested people for similar scams in other parts of the country.
In December 2015, five people from Anhui province pretending to be from Hong Kong were arrested in Changsha, Hunan province, for stealing mobile phones from unwary Good Samaritans, Xiamen-based Sunnews.cn reported.
Armed with fake Hong Kong ID, phone and debit cards, the con artists would ask in accented Mandarin to use the phone of a passer-by to complete a transaction before disappearing with the device.
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One of the gang said he used a language app and watched Hong Kong dramas to learn Cantonese but he was not good enough to pull off the scam in Guangdong, the report said.
In August 2016, three men were arrested in Beijing for fleecing 32 people in a similar scam in two months, online news outlet Ifeng.com reported.
Commenters online said they had encountered people pretending to be from Hong Kong and in an emergency.
“There were people claiming to be Hongkongers in Wuhou district in Chengdu. They told people they could not pay their phone bill. Do not lend them money,” one internet user wrote.
