Exclusive | Manager at Hong Kong finance firm loses HK$14 million to man she never met in eight-year online love scam
Con artist pretended to be British film director as police reveal city’s residents lost HK$75.9 million in similar scams in first three months of this year
A financial professional has become Hong Kong’s biggest victim of internet romance scams, losing HK$14 million (US$1.8 million) to a con artist she had an online relationship with for eight years, police sources revealed, amid a surge in such cases this year.
Online romance scammers duped 119 Hongkongers to the tune of HK$75.9 million in total in the first three months of this year, five times more than the amount for the same period last year.
A police source described the eight-year con as the longest-lasting online love scam in the city, and the HK$14 million lost as the largest in a single case.
The victim, a woman in her 40s who works as a manager in a financial institution, met her purported lover on an online dating website and sent the money to bank accounts in Malaysia and Hong Kong in more than 200 transactions starting in 2010, sources told the Post.
She did not meet him face-to-face throughout their eight-year relationship.