By
Daisy CL Mandap
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| Four of the recipients of the money lost in the scam appear to be Filipinos |
It all started with a seemingly innocent request sent through
WhatsApp to a Filipina resident: Could she answer a simple questionnaire on how
Hong Kong people regard local tourist spots, for which she would be paid a
small fee?
Chit (not her real name) who is a director in a media
company, did not see anything unusual with the request as she had often taken
part in surveys in her line of work. The fact that the person who texted her
knew her by name helped put her at ease.
Little did she know that by acceding to that request, which
was sent to her at 10:12pm on March 13, she would end up losing $698,000 to
scammers - all in just over 24 hours.
On March 14, having set her up for the sting by sending her
small amounts of money through FPS (Faster Payment Service) for seemingly innocuous
tasks as survey form-filling or following certain Instagram accounts, the
scammers made a move on Chit.
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| The fake survey form sent to Chit in exchange for a token fee |
They asked her if she wanted to earn more money through
crypto currency trading and she said yes.
That led her being dragged quickly into the scammers’ net,
with five people using the Telegram app all trying to put her under their
control and crowding her mind with suggestions, criticisms and rebuke so she could
not think clearly, and was forced to keep sending money to atone for her “mistakes.”
Chit, who holds a master’s degree in communication, was also taught to be
subservient and to follow the “teachers” in the group so she would learn how to
open a trading account and earn money quickly by making investments through a
crypto website, ramaraxholdgopro.com.
At 5:26pm that same day, Chit made her first big “investment”
of $1,500 by transferring money through FPS to one Chu Wing Cheong.
The amounts she was told to send to people then began
growing bigger by the minute, with the “teachers” in the group always telling
her off for supposedly making mistakes, failing to complete a task on time, or
that a teammate had chosen a chore that would result in a bigger yield.
The biggest transfers of money amounting to a total of $340,000 were both made
to one named Leung Chui-fan or Liang Cui-fen, who had an account at China CITIC
Bank and Standard Chartered.
The first $170,000 was sent at 9:51pm on March 14, the next $20,000 at 12:12am on March 15,and the last $150,000 at 5:04pm on the same day.
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| Scammers often use job offers to rope in victims |
On hindsight, there were clues that should have set off
alarm bells in Chit’s mind. First, the one who contacted her initially and
introduced herself as “Alice” had used a number with an area code for
Indonesia, while purportedly doing a survey on Hong Kong people.
Second, she was asked to send money to private individuals using
several bank accounts, when she was supposed to be dealing with officers of the crypto company, “Ramarax”. (The website she had logged on to, www.ramaraxholdgopro.com is no
longer accessible).
“I was manipulated and controlled somehow into a behavior so
not me,” said Chit, after she reported the swindling to her bank and the police.
At the police’s suggestion, she also informed the Consulate
through Consul Paul Saret, head of the assistance to nationals section, “as there may be
Filipinos involved in the scam.”
Among those she sent money to had Filipino sounding
names, including a certain Arlene Tumamao Aguinaldo, whose accounts at Standard
Chartered Bank and online bank Mox, were used to receive a total of $246,500
from Chit in four separate transactions.
The money that went into Aguinaldo's accounts were all sent between 5:45pm and 7:17pm on March 14.
Another account at Mox in the name of one Michelle Besa Batayan
was used to receive a single transfer of $110,000 from Chit. This was the last she managed to send, at 6:45pm on March 15, as she had run out of money.
Just before Chit sought police assistance, she was given
another name, that of Angelie Colgado Garcia, whose Mox account was given so she could transfer an additional $150,000.
But by this time, Chit’s bank account was already depleted,
and she was deeply in debt to two friends who did not hesitate sending her
money, as soon as she asked them for a loan.
“I have to pay back two people I borrowed money from so I have
to borrow again and liquidate some investments,” a distraught Chit told The
SUN.
Luckily, her family in the Philippines did not hesitate to
help, making Chit even more angry at herself for having missed the signs of a scam.
Despite this, she remained alert enough to have
screen-captured several of her exchanges with the scammers on the Telegram app, even though they had set them to
disappear shortly after they were sent.
She also managed to take down the names of the recipients,
the time and date of each money transfer, the account numbers she sent money to,
as well as the names of the account holders – all of which goes to show that getting
snared in a scam could happen, even to the most astute among us.
With the detailed and substantial information she had turned
over to the police, apart from her timely reporting of the incident, Chit is
hopeful that some, if not all, of the money fleeced from her could be recovered.
At the very least, she hopes that by sharing her story, even
in anonymity, she can help warn others not to engage unknown people on social
media, and avoid falling into the same trap.
