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386 consumer voucher fraud cases from last year to now involve cashing out at discounted prices and 15 people detained by impersonating the police

2022-04-12T15:40:52.811Z


The government has launched the electronic consumer voucher scheme last year, and this year a new round of 5,000 yuan electronic consumer vouchers was issued just last Thursday (7th). However, the police have received a total of 386 fraud cases related to consumer vouchers since last year.


The government has launched the electronic consumer voucher scheme last year, and this year a new round of 5,000 yuan electronic consumer vouchers was issued just last Thursday (7th). However, the police have received a total of 386 fraud cases related to consumer vouchers since last year. 1.6 million yuan, including fraudsters stealing the victim's information to falsely obtain consumer coupons, and cashing out consumer coupons at a discounted price.

After investigation, the police have arrested 15 people so far.


The arrested persons include 11 men and 4 women Chinese nationals (aged 20 to 66), who respectively reported working as cooks, taxi drivers, waiters, businessmen and unemployed. They were suspected of fraud, conspiracy to defraud and theft. All of them have been released on bail. check.

The police received more than 10 reports on the new round of consumer vouchers issued last Thursday. Of the 15 people arrested, four were involved in a new round of consumer voucher fraud.

Superintendent Kong Qingxun of the Commercial Crime Investigation Division of the Police said at a press conference this evening (12th) that since last year's consumer voucher program, the police have received a total of 386 fraud cases related to consumer vouchers, involving a total amount of about 1.6 million yuan.

Among them, 142 cases involved fraudsters stealing the victim's information to obtain consumer coupons; the other 239 cases involved the victim filling in the wrong payment platform information, and the money was transferred to another person's account, but the other party refused to return it.

At the same time, there were 5 cases involving fraudsters cashing out consumer coupons from the public at discounted prices.

Method 1: Stealing personal information to register consumer coupons

Law Chenghan, Chief Inspector of Criminal Deployment of the West Kowloon Region, pointed out that fraudsters mainly have three types of crime tactics. The first type involves the theft of personal information. Some fraudsters obtain personal information such as the victim's name and identity card number by illegal means, and then pretend to be Victims register consumer vouchers, or falsely claim to have been authorized by the victim to transfer electronic consumer vouchers to different payment platforms to make profits.

Victims usually only find out that their personal data has been compromised when they self-register for the vouchers at a later time.

In addition, some cases were revealed by the Consumer Coupon Scheme Secretariat. Some people used the personal data of deceased relatives to register consumer coupons, and the cases were later referred to the police for investigation.

The main way for fraudsters to obtain the victim's personal information is that the victim did not properly keep the personal information, including losing his ID card, borrowing money from an illegal lender with his ID card, or randomly entrusting some strangers to register consumer vouchers.

The fraudsters involved were involved in the crime of fraud.

Method 2: Refuse to refund money to citizens who fill in the wrong information

The second type of crime is the unlawful embezzlement of another person's property.

Some citizens mistakenly entered the account number of the payment platform when registering the consumption voucher, so that the payment for the consumption voucher fell into the payment platform of others.

Luo Chenghan pointed out that if citizens receive money from consumer coupons that do not belong to them, but refuse to return them, they may commit related crimes under the Theft Ordinance.

Method 3: Cash out coupons to earn the difference

The third type is to cash out coupons at a discounted price.

The police found that swindlers met with the public to some designated locations or shops, provided the public with the payment codes of the shops, and then cashed out consumer coupons in cash at different discounted prices, making profits from the difference.

Citizens may commit the crime of conspiracy to defraud if they conspire with merchants to cash out consumer coupons by illegal means or by creating false transaction records.

The police have arrested 4 people so far for the crime of cashing out consumer coupons at discounted prices, including 3 men (aged 33 to 45) who were arrested on charges of "fraud" in Mong Kok, Sham Shui Po and Tseung Kwan O on the day after the new round of spending was released last Friday. ).

The remaining 11 people arrested were mainly involved in impersonating victims or embezzling personal information to defraud victims of consumer vouchers.

Source: hk1

All news articles on 2022-04-12

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