Phone scammers con elderly Hong Kong woman out of HK$3m by posing as mainland Chinese officials
Phone scammers posing as mainland Chinese officials tricked a 72-year-old Hong Kong woman into sending HK$3 million to end a fictitious case against her – the latest in a series of scams which have netted fraudsters more than HK$182 million since last month.
Phone scammers posing as mainland Chinese officials tricked a 72-year-old Hong Kong woman into sending HK$3 million to end a fictitious case against her – the latest in a series of scams which have netted fraudsters more than HK$182 million since last month.
The case was reported to police last night after the woman received a call from a man earlier this month, claiming to be from a courier company. The caller said a parcel the woman had sent contained fake documents.
Her call was then directed to a man claiming to be a mainland Chinese official, who told her she was suspected of being involved in a mainland case and was under investigation. The woman then received some faxed documents, which the scammers claimed were arrest warrants from mainland authorities.
Afterwards, she received a phone call telling her to pay HK$3 million to solve the case. She followed the instructions and transferred the amount to a mainland bank account.
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After telling her family about the incident yesterday, the woman suspected she was being cheated and reported the case to police.
So far, nobody has been arrested.
The number of phone scams perpetrated against Hongkongers has increased since last month, with scammers taking HK$56.72 million from 39 residents in the first 14 days of this month.
Last month, city residents lost HK$126 million to cross-border phone scams, with some of the money remitted to Malaysia, Taiwan and Macau.
