Hong Kong housewife swindled out of HK$7.1 million after investing in cryptocurrency via bogus platform
- Woman, 46, files report to police more than year after being coaxed into transferring money into 15 bank accounts
- ‘She became suspicious only when she could not contact two online scammers and withdraw money from the trading platform,’ insider says
The woman, 46, realised she had been scammed and filed a report to police last Tuesday, more than a year after she was coaxed into transferring the money into 15 designated bank accounts for “investment”.
A source familiar with the case said on Wednesday that the victim did not receive any profits during that period.
“She became suspicious only when she could not contact two online scammers and withdraw money from the trading platform,” the insider said. “She found out it was a scam when she discussed it with her family.”
He said one of the fraudsters approached the woman through Instagram in July 2022 before tricking her into investing in virtual currency via a link to a sham trading platform.
“Another suspect impersonated a customer service representative from the trading platform and instructed the victim to transfer more than HK$7.12 million into designated bank accounts between August 19, 2022, and March 4, 2023,” the source said.
According to the force’s Scameter search engine, the name of the trading platform the tricksters used was related to a similar scam report. Police urged the public to verify the identity of the counterparty before making transactions or remittances and stay vigilant before inputting personal information.
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The insider said the victim claimed she was not familiar with how to use Scameter and never received any warnings about scams on social media.
The Scameter platform, accessible through the CyberDefender website, helps the public check for suspicious or fraudulent activities, according to police.
The search engine can help identify suspicious web addresses, emails, platform usernames, bank accounts, mobile phone numbers and IP addresses.
Detectives from the Western district investigation unit are treating the case as “obtaining property by deception”, an offence punishable by up to 10 years in jail.
So far, no arrests have been made.
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Police figures showed a significant rise in online investment frauds, with 5,105 reports last year compared with 1,884 cases logged in 2022.
Financial losses also increased to HK$3.26 billion in 2023 from HK$926 million the year before.
The city recorded a 42.6 per cent increase in all types of deception to 39,824 cases last year from 27,923 reports in 2022.
The amount lost went up by 89 per cent to HK$9.1 billion in 2023 from HK$4.8 billion the year before.
