MACAU, October 8 - The Judiciary Police (PJ) discovered that fraudsters had been sending bogus text messages to Macao residents in the name of the Macao SAR Government. These SMS falsely claim that residents have unpaid fines, and the problem can be resolved by clicking on the link embedded in the message. The link leads to a fake website purporting to be the “Government Portal of Macao Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China.” Residents who enter their vehicle license plate numbers as prompted on the page will be informed that they have pending fines for traffic violations that need to be paid via credit card. Scammers then use the credit card information they extracted to carry out large-sum, unauthorized transactions, resulting in financial losses for the victims.

The Anti-Fraud Coordination Center of the Judiciary Police reminds the public to:

1. Traffic violation notifications will only inform vehicle owners they have been charged and will not attach any link to the text.
2. If you need to conduct online transactions with a credit card, carefully verify the transaction details (such as the merchant and transaction amount) displayed in the message with the one-time confirmation code to avoid being deceived.
3. When in doubt, you can use PJ’s “Anti-Fraud Program” to check the risk index of relevant websites or call our anti-fraud enquiry hotline at 8800 7777 or the crime report hotline at 993 for assistance.