Mail delivery phishing scammers cheat Hongkongers out of HK$2.2 million as demand for delivery during Covid-19 pandemic surges
- Criminals sent victims fake messages or emails purportedly from Hongkong Post asking for credit card details to cover a mailing fee, police say
- The information was then used to make online purchases, with one man cheated out of HK$75,000
Many of the fake messages told victims they had a parcel delivery pending but the recipient address was incomplete, according to the police’s cybersecurity and technology crime bureau. Scammers then directed victims to a controlled website and asked for a postal fee of a few dollars.
“Scammers were not after such a small amount of money, but instead the credit card details provided by the victims,” Superintendent Terry Cheung Tin-lok said on Tuesday. “Then the culprits used the stolen data to go shopping.”
Police had received reports from 120 victims who had lost a total of HK$2.21 million since November. In the single largest case, a 39-year-old man lost HK$75,000 in January after falling for a trap similar to the phishing email scam. Not knowing who had sent the parcel, the victim paid the “delivery fee” with his credit card. The next day he received a call from his bank notifying him four online transactions totalling HK$75,000 had been made with the card, prompting him to alert police.
Kenneth Wu Pak-kin, Hongkong Post’s director of operations, said the city’s postal service would not send a text or email notification to anyone. Instead, a postal worker would leave a mail collection notification card at a person’s home address if delivery failed.