SINGAPORE: Hong Kong is seeing a surge in financial losses due to phone scams even as it logs a marked decline in the number of cases, with more mainland Chinese students in the city falling prey.
Local police said 474 phone scam cases were reported in the first quarter of the year, a 21 per cent drop from the same period last year. But the amount of money lost more than quadrupled to HK$789 million (US$101 million) from HK$195 million.
Government official impersonation scams accounted for the overwhelming bulk of losses. While there were 168 such cases, just more than a third of the total tally, they were responsible for at least HK$760 million of the money swindled, local media reported.
More mainland Chinese students in the city are also falling for such scams, pointed out Senior Inspector Lam Pui-hang of the Hong Kong Police Force’s intelligence gathering and scam response team.
A total of 39 cases involving mainland Chinese students were recorded in the first quarter of 2024, compared to 29 cases in the same period last year, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
“BRAINWASHED” BY SCAMMERS
An 18-year-old mainland Chinese victim was one of the recent cases. Identified as “Chen”, the first-year university student shared her experience at a police press conference via video call.
Chen described how she received a call from scammers claiming to be immigration authorities.
The caller had claimed that she had posted “undesirable advertisements” under her phone number registered in China and thus “violated Hong Kong laws” and would be “blacklisted”, HK01 reported.
Chen was later transferred to another caller claiming to be a mainland Chinese police officer, who said she was involved in a money laundering case. The scammer also presented her with statements from her real bank account that showed transfer details.
She was later shown an arrest warrant and an order for her bank account to be frozen. She was warned not to reveal any information as the case involved Hong Kong officials and several banks, or she would be arrested immediately.
“At that moment I was extremely agitated,” Chen said in Mandarin.
