Here are the two key reasons people keep falling for phone scams in Hong Kong
Officers say mainland Chinese students or newcomers to city are most at risk, after 716 phone scams reported in first nine months of year
False calls about personal documents or cross-border parcels are the main reasons so many students or newcomers from mainland China keep being tricked by phone scammers posing as government officials in Hong Kong, police have said.
The force received 716 phone scam reports in the first nine months of this year, with 82 per cent of victims being scammed successfully. The total monetary loss went up by 28 per cent to nearly HK$200 million in this time. Around 80 per cent of the money went to bogus “government officials”.
According to Superintendent Andy Chan Tin-chu, who is also the head of the Anti-Deception Coordination Centre, set up three months ago, 426 cases involved successful scams by fake law enforcers.
Why are so many young people falling for phone scams?
More than one-third of the victims were mainland Chinese university students in Hong Kong. Another 50 were new immigrants and 116 toured or visited relatives in the city, with most them also coming from mainland China.
Just in the week of October 9-15, nine mainland Chinese university students in the city fell prey to fake law enforcers, with each of the victims being swindled out of HK$6,000-HK$80,000 to “settle the criminal case they [were] allegedly involved [in]”.
Chan said scammers played sophisticated psychological tricks to fool victims and make huge numbers of cold calls, in which they pose as immigration officers or told victims about unclaimed documents or parcels.
“Only two types of people would respond – either he or she is smart enough and wants to find out about the games played by the con men,” Chan said. “Or a mainlander who won’t even think about a possible phone scam, but that he or she was having trouble with the documents held by authorities … The documents are important to them because they are staying in Hong Kong.”