Perth's Asian community targeted by Hong Kong scammer - Chinese speaking tele-fraud
Issue Date: - Thursday, 10 April 2008
A newly packaged tele-fraud has arrived in WA and is plaguing Asian Australians who speak Cantonese or Mandarin.
Chinese speaking scammers are telephoning WA consumers who come from Asian backgrounds, with the intention of cheating them into sending wire transfers of funds to bank accounts in Hong Kong.
“Tele-fraud has been around for many years and this recent variation of specifically targeting Asian people in their first language is of concern to us,” Consumer Protection Commissioner Anne Driscoll said.
“The callers know their targets names and tell a story of being a Hong Kong based promotions company.
“They tell the consumer they have won a prize in a lottery worth between HK$1.2m and HK$5m and to collect their prize the consumer must pay taxes that vary between AUS$5,000 and AUS$10,000.
“The callers are usually female and do not speak English,” Commissioner Driscoll said.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Channel News Asia both feature warnings on their websites of similar scams involving surveys and lottery winnings which require fees to be paid upfront by wire transfer.
“Any unsolicited approaches should be carefully checked and people should never send money via wire transfers to collect so-called winnings from competitions that they have never entered,” Ms Driscoll said.
“There have also been reports that the callers ask for personal information such as passport numbers to ‘verify’ the identity of the ‘winner’.
“It is extremely risky to provide personal details to anyone that you do not know or trust, as this information could be used to steal your identity and commit crimes,” the Commissioner said.
Anyone receiving this kind of telephone call should hang up immediately and not give the caller any personal information.