Elderly Hong Kong women cheated out of more than HK$14 million in separate phone scams
- Sources say victims were accused of money-laundering by bogus officials and told to reveal bank details or transfer cash
- Women only realised they had been conned when they found their bank accounts looted
Two elderly Hong Kong women have been cheated out more than HK$14 million (US$1.8 million) in separate phone scams, with one defrauded of HK$7 million from the sale of a flat, sources have revealed.
A 71-year-old woman who returned to Hong Kong from Singapore and sold a flat she owned last year lost HK$7.6 million less than two weeks after she fell victim to a phone scam, one insider said.
She was one of two women, the other aged 82, who lost a total of HK$14.1 million in phone frauds who reported their cases to police on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The 71-year-old retired in 2003 and later emigrated to Singapore with her daughter in 2003, but returned to the city alone in mid-2021 and sold one of her flats in Hong Kong for about HK$7 million.
The insider on Thursday said the woman got a phone call from a man who claimed to be a mainland Chinese police officer in early September, who accused her of fleeing the mainland during quarantine in Guangzhou, even though she had not visited the area.
“Another female scammer impersonating a senior public security officer later called the elderly woman, accusing her of being involved in money laundering,” the source said. “The victim was instructed to set up a new bank account and transfer her money into the account to prove her innocence.”