Hong Kong's email scam crisis: mainland hackers snare HK$605 million from 489 victims so far this year

Hong Kong is in the grip of a multimillion-dollar email scam crisis that has seen the average amount of money tricked out of its victims - whose annual numbers run into the hundreds - increase more than a third compared with last year, according to police.

Crooks steal the email identities of legitimate traders, then pose as business vendors to elicit payments from their clients.

The racket has seen the total sum scammed out of businesspeople rise to HK$605 million from 489 victims in the first six months of this year, compared to HK$983 million across 1,095 companies for the whole of 2014.

In a case revealed by police yesterday, a supply-management company lost HK$1.8 million to fraudsters pretending to be owners of the firm, who sent an email ordering staff to remit money to a foreign account.

The online crimes come amid a separate, ongoing police investigation into a rash of cases in which well-off Hongkongers have been duped into depositing money into mainland accounts.

Police warned business executives their emails were at risk of being hacked by con artists.