Update | Phone scammers posing as mainland officials cheat Hong Kong victims out of HK$85 million in a month
Fraud cases involving bogus mainland officials continue to surge – and police say epidemic is hurting their ability to tackle other offences
A massive surge in crime involving telephone con artists posing as mainland officials has cheated Hongkongers out of HK$85.4 million in this month alone, police said yesterday.
Even as police said the sheer scale of the burgeoning racket was hampering their ability to tackle other crimes, the force made its first arrest in connection with scams involving tricksters claiming to be calling from Beijing's liaison office in the city.
The 30-year-old suspect, a local woman from Sha Tin, is accused of cheating a retired woman in Happy Valley out of HK$200,000 last week. She was arrested yesterday when she allegedly approached the victim again for another HK$300,000. Officers found fake Independent Commission Against Corruption and police identity cards in her possession.
Police suspect she was working as a money collector for a syndicate, as she did not make the calls herself and the money was transferred to the mainland. More arrests may follow.
According to police sources, tricksters duping victims by pretending to be staff from key mainland and Hong Kong institutions had contributed "significantly" to a drop in the crime detection rate. The rate fell to 40.4 per cent in the first half of the year, a 10-year low.
A total of 263 people had fallen victim to the fake-official scam, police director of crime and security Lo Mung-hung said. Typically, Putonghua or Cantonese-speaking fraudsters tell victims they have broken mainland laws before directing them to bogus government websites where they are shown forged arrest warrants or injunctions containing their photo and other personal details.