Hong Kong’s overall crime rate dropped for the 12th consecutive year in 2018, by 3.2 per cent to 54,225 cases. The per capita figure of 728 cases per 100,000 people was the lowest since 1970. Since there is no evidence to the contrary, the figures must be seen to enhance the city’s claim to be one of the world’s safest.

At street level or in the physical sense at least that may remain true. But it appears to be far from the case once rampant fraud in all forms of online activity is taken into account. While street and old-fashioned white-collar crime may have been dropping to the lowest level in nearly half a century, the number of social media scams almost doubled, according to police figures. Financial losses from more than 2,000 cases of social-media fraud alone totalled HK$500 million (US$63.7 million), more than double the previous year. And these are just the reported instances. Counting phone and email cases, crimes of deception surged 18 per cent year on year to nearly 9,000.

HK$2.2 billion and counting: the price of lax cybersecurity

The annual crime statistics flesh out the background to some well publicised, high-profile cases of deception. In one, a businesswoman in her 60s lost HK$180 million over four years in an online romance scam to someone posing as a British engineer. In another, police have arrested 14 people over a scam involving gold bullion trading in London, in which the chief victim was a well-known Chinese antiques collector who lost HK$580 million over two years.