Singaporean businessman lost $70,000 to a China phone scam
15 July 2012 4:29 PM
A Singaporean businessman has been tricked of $70,000 by a phone scam in Guangzhou, China according to a report by Shin Min Daily.
A Singaporean businessman who is known only as Danny received a call during a business trip there. The caller pretended to be his friend and said he required a sum of money due to an emergency. Danny proceeded to hand over RMB350,000 (approximately $70,000).
Another businessman from Hong Kong is said to have fell prey to the same scam and lost over RMB600,000 (S$119,000).
After receiving numerous reports regarding the same phone scam, local police organised a taskforce. They traced telephone numbers, transaction accounts and video footages from CCTV cameras in banks in order to identify the suspects.
The ring is estimated to have amassed $4 million from their scams.
Local media reported that the taskforce first arrested four men at their hotel room where RMB20,000 in cash and 500 bank cards were recovered. The four men however were only part of a bigger group, and only tasked with withdrawing money from victim’s accounts.
The police later arrested six other people involved in the scam in Foshan and various locations around Guangzhou, and eventually arrested 42 suspects and recovered over 3,400 bank cards. The group is said to have made over 500,000 calls and managed to scam people in over 1,000 of these calls.
Divided into a calling and withdrawal unit, the calling unit would ring targets pretending to be their close friends, alerting them to their new phone number. Afterwards, they would call again to ask for help, saying they’d been arrested for hiring a prostitute and needed money to pay the fine.
The callers would ask their targets not to notify anyone as they did not want their family to know about the situation. If this excuse did not work, they would find other reasons to convince the person.
Once they succeeded in their scam, the withdrawal unit would go to ATM machines to withdraw money from the given transaction account.
Each person in the withdrawal unit possessed 150-200 bank cards, and the whole process would take less than 10 minutes. The men arrested are said to be in their 20s and 30s. They would rotate people every 10 or so days and change residences monthly.
One of the suspects told local media that someone in his village began recruiting people in the group. Once they were recruited, they would be sent for a week-long training.
The suspect said that “usually, the people are introduced by relatives, classmates or friends. Doing this is more lucrative that working. Since I have no other skills, I agreed since it can earn money.”
