Huge explosion in online romance scams in Hong Kong in 2018, with victims swindled out of US$57.6 million
- Police warned people to be alert when making friends online and to take any request to send money as sign of a scam
Cyber scammers cheated Hongkongers out of HK$451 million (US$57.6 million) in the first 10 months of this year, up from HK$109 million for the same period in 2017. And the vast majority of the victims were love-struck individuals being exploited.
Figures revealed by Hong Kong police on Sunday showed 1,777 social media scam reports were received between January and October, up from the 808 cases for the same period last year.
Among the losses, some HK$417.1 million, or about 92 per cent, involved internet love scams, compared to HK$84.5 million; there were 520 such cases, up from 170 in 2017.
The spike in cases and the scale of the money involved prompted police to warn the public to be alert when making friends online and ignore them if they demanded payment, which, police warned, was a “foolproof indication” of a scam.
Police Hong Kong Island regional commander Yu Tat-chung said victims of cyber scams were not necessarily old or uneducated.
