You may have seen video clips of netizens “playing” with scammers over scam calls or have even done it yourself before. It seems like Hong Kong actress Sandra Ng has her own share of fun with them as well.
Last Friday (June 16), speaking to the Hong Kong media at the commencement of production for her new movie Love Lies, Sandra said that she receives scams calls very frequently — at least five calls a day and mostly relating to love scams.
The 57-year-old said: “My partner (director) Peter Chan asked me why he didn’t receive them. I won’t delete these calls and messages, as keeping them for a laugh isn’t too bad.”
“I did think about changing my mobile phone number before, but scammers pick numbers to call at random, so it doesn’t make a difference even if I change it,” she added.
The movie centres around how a rich woman (Sandra) falls for a love scam plotted by a mastermind (Michael Cheung) and a swindler (Stephy Tang) of an online scam group.
Sandra also said that she thinks that her appearance doesn’t look like someone who can be easily deceived.
In a separate interview at the same event, she shared that she had a fun encounter recently involving a scammer claiming to be from the Department of Health.
“I was told to press one for Cantonese and press two for Mandarin, so I pressed one, but the person on the other end spoke to me in Mandarin instead,” Sandra said, as she and Michael chuckled.
“I asked: ‘Why are you speaking to me in Mandarin?’ So I continued to speak to them in Cantonese and told them I can’t understand Mandarin.
“In the end, the scammer told me that the Cantonese option was busy, so my call was transferred to them, a Mandarin speaker, instead. I can’t stop laughing.”
Sandra added that she eventually hung up the call on the scammer, but they called her back using a different number.
Mimicking the scammer, she shrilled in Mandarin: “Why did you hang up my call!” Everyone burst into laughter.
Sandra added that her colleague asked her later why she “played” with the scammer for so long, to which she replied: “It’s quite fun to play with them!”
This article was first published on AsiaOne and republished on theAsianparent with permission.