The Story
It started around beginning of June when people phoned in and say they are Foo Dah International Company and needs to ask for some information about traveling that what kind of travel you prefer and questions, then afterwards they asked for my name, I was a bit aware so therefor gave my English name instead of my name in the ID book, then they said that they will be a prize drawing contest at the 10th of June and I must be aware of it and to watch it over satellite channel (I forgot the channel name because I wasn't paying any attention to this and since I don't own a satellite channel, I didn't even bother). Few days later they called again asking if I did watch the channel (this is around 14th-17th) and said that an Australian Taiwanese immigrant An Bung, Lee (李安邦) and I (my English name) have won their second price and it's the price of USD $ 100 000, and it's already been a week that's passed and I didn't give them a phone call or anything, and they're going to help me out since I sounded like a disciplined fellow, they'll guide me through the procedure.
The first person contacted me named herself "Yu Ching" (雨情) telling me all about the procedures I needed to do to get the prize money, and then she redirected me to one of their accountants who named herself "Yu-Xing Song" (宋雨心). To get this prize money they asked for my bank account, so the next day I went to open a random bank account so that just in case they smuggle through the bank account, I don't have any money inside, then few hours later, they said they have came into a problem of that there were no overseas big money transactions done with this account so if I want to receive the money with this account, I'll need to first send them fees for the document since I'm not personally in Hong Kong and not expecting me just to fly there just to get the prize personally, so they offer this "海外信託" (I don't know some of these difficult words or can't translate everything the best way) and it is used so that the government prevents people to send money overseas to wash them or anything like that, but then I must first provide 1/50 ($2000) of this from my own money as proof that I applied this myself and has nothing to do with the company, and also to receive this amount at the fullest without paying any taxes, and they have lawyers and accountants that can help me do these procedures, these can be done through Western Union like Mr Lee did, and if there's an error with the amount of money received, the government need to repay me 1.5x of the money I should get, (then they made stories to convince saying that an accountant gets much more than the money I transfer to them, why would they do something illegal that will make them lose their job, and also if the governments lied about the money, then who'll trust the government anymore). The 1st transaction was made on 19th June 2008 to Chih Wei, Tsai (Details above), and told me to keep the receipt slip, and send a fax to 華裔事務所 (Hwa-Yi Office), then I tried to call Foo Dah, and asked for the person that was helping me at that time, but I called the wrong number and landed up calling Hwa-Yi and looked for Yu-Xing Song, they replied that there's nobody working there with that name, and the number I have dialed is Hwa-Yi Office. It takes 2 days for them to receive the money, I was been called 2 days later saying that the money have been received but they forgot to inform me the same thing they did to Mr Lee and made him upset, that I must have a connection with the Jockey Club before I am able to get the money and the reason is the same, to prevent money going overseas illegally, but they don't expect me to join their club but rather let me join temporally by the fee of 600 000 HKD (Hong Kong Dollars) which is their 1/5 of the full fee, and then they can cancel and refund me full after they send me the money. Then I said to them then they can just deduct the money from my prize and then use it to apply the temporally membership, then they came up with another story saying that if I've won their 4th prize, which is a car, you can't offer the import company a tire and say use it as the tax for the car and stories like that, so that I must try to overcome this problem myself if I have no money, and then this is when she redirect me to Shin Hwei, Wong (王心惠), the head of the accounting department, to sort out this problem. Shin Hwei Wong offered me saying that their company might be able to sponsor me 1/3 of the membership fee and I'll just need to provide the rest, which is 400000 HKD, but then they'll just need to get the approval from their head, and then she gave me her cell phone number, few hours later they called back saying that was approved and then I can send the money to the same accountant Chih Wei, Tsai.
The 2nd transaction was made at 24th June 2008, and the same thing happened, asked me to keep the receipt and send a copy of it to Hwa Yi Office, and then told me that the people from the jockey club will contact me soon and again 2 days later, they called and said that the money was received and they've already sent people to do the job for me. Few minutes later the first time I got into contact with the Jockey club, the guy named himself Mr. Bei (貝先生) called me and congratulated me of my prize that I've won and they are the sponsors of the whole prize draw competition, but then there's a problem that occurred that the government or the tax people, doesn't accept that the part of money was sponsored by a company that has something to do with the competition and therefor I must provide the rest of the money in order for the membership to be accepted so that they'll be able to transfer the money to me, then I got angry and asked them if I can get my money back and abandon the prize, but then he replied that it's not possible because I have already been registered into their membership and there's no way that they could refund me if I didn't join their membership yet.
Here's when things started to get very fishy...
The 3rd transaction was made 8th July 2008 and this time to Zong Ming, Liou
since at the mean time Chih Wei, Tsai have received another case so therefor won't be able to help me to do the documentary work and 2 days later, Yu Xing, Wong called me saying that I have done all the procedures to get my prize, 100000 HKD, and people from the Jockey club can tell me the rest so they called me again saying that all of these had been completed and therefor I can get my money, 100000HKD but then here comes ANOTHER problem, the Jockey club had a case with the government to have a charity function by having private Jockey races about a week before and therefor they cant have any transactions with other means except for participants or investors, and therefore since they have made me a promise so that I can get the money as soon as possible, is it possible for them to change my detail from a "Winner" to a "Investor" but money has to flow within investments before any money can transfer, and then he explained the risk about investments and Jockey races that I might win or lose, if I win, it's the best since I'll get more but if I lost, they have an insurance offer to the 1st time participants to cut down the risk for amateur people, but will only work the first time, that if I have a lost, they'll refund my original money back 1060000 HKD since the 60000 was the temporary membership fees, and send them to my account, but since the weather in Hong Kong wasn't that well at the night, he'll invest the money into the next day's early races, then he told me the whole system and the money he'll use for the investment, it'll be on the next day's 1st 3rd and 4th race, and the money invested are as follows
1st race: 500000HKD
3rd race: 300000HKD
4th race: 260000HKD
and for example the money I won from the 1st race will carry over to the next race's amount, but keep the original money from the first race, so that means if I won 200000HKD from the 1st race, my 3rd race will have the ante of 500000HKD and so forth. The next day he called me again asking if my fax is working and if they can fax some information to me and some documents to complete, but then they couldn't get it through after a few tries I tried to receive so they called me again and tell me in person saying that I have won big with the investment and the total amount I got now is 378_,___,___HKD (Since it was so many random number and I was busy with something else, I wasn't able to take the full amount down, but I can make sure with the amount with the bank they put it in at the moment, and gave me the phone number I must call, see above, and my details, account number and my password), but here comes another obstacle for me to overcome, the government must be able to proof that I have got this from an investment and I have no proof of any investment in Hong Kong, but they'll provide the people to do it for me, but then I must provide a fraction amount of the money I've gained and it adds up to 77744 HKD, and as I always have told them, I don't have so much money to apply for the fee, they say I must find a way to overcome this again, like borrow money from friends of family again and etc. Now here comes another fishy part, the same evening I tried to confirm the amount I received, the amount changed into 386_,___,___HKD and I tried other languages, apparently the Cantonese and Mandarin worked fine, but then the English wouldn't give me the amount, I then figured out maybe their English sucked too much and got more suspicious, so I waited for their next call, and they called again. This time I asked what's wrong with the amount and all the things I thought of, then he got angry and said, what's wrong with getting more? If I got more, shouldn't I be more happy instead of getting angry? What happens if I lost instead? Why don't I personally go to Hong Kong and see it for myself and sign the whole documents and things, then he told me I must talk to Foo Dah for the information, and this is when about I lost contact with them, but apparently the phone numbers till work, but since they have a tracking system they'll know who or where we are calling from.
After I summarize the whole thing up, I realized and came up to these questions and suspicions and question I asked them, but they became nervous and just give random answers and threats:
How did they get my phone number?
How did the $100'000->100'000HKD->1000'000HKD
The 海外信託, 2% of $100'000 is $2'000, but then the amount changed, they didn't say anything more about the information.
Since these are documents, don't I need to sign them personally then e-mail or fax them back to the government?
They called again from the same company but don't know who they talking to and there's another function was on 19th of June.
After the investment, I'm no longer with the Jockey club since I have canceled the membership and it went into the investment, don't I need to rejoin the club again?
I received from one of the calls from a local cell phone number that worked there, but the number works no more.
Same with the people from the Jockey club, Mr. Bei, called via a local cell phone number too, but then he answered from the international call I called him.
I did ask for their website but they said the website was hacked before so they took it down and now they are going to put it up soon again after the web designers redo the whole site.
I asked them to e-mail me the documents and proofs, but they said these information cant be e-mailed and only can be faxed.
I did ask for the address of Foo Dah but then the given address doesn't exist and neither the company existed (family's friend had connection afterwards and then found out for me).
The bank only says 香港外匯銀行 (Hong Kong Transfer Bank).
They cant provide me the address of the bank, jockey club and Hwa Yi since the details are at their office and they are currently at a business trip.
Mr. Lee's number from Australia (But since they work together from the same scam group, I did sense he was acting since the news report I read about had the same line as he said).
Is it legal to cut the taxes.
What will happen if I go there personally to get the money and documents myself.
but in the end they all tried to avoid these questions but since it's all too late, they wouldn't want to get the extra 77744HKD to get busted so they hanged off and things.
Clearly enough I didn't observe enough to see through these mistakes, but some of them were after they received the money so I couldn't do anything anymore.
There are articles about this same kind of scam but I only read about it afterwards.
|
Linear Mode
