Retired Hong Kong brokerage manager loses HK$18 million to scammer posing as security official
- Source familiar with situation says scammer contacted 67-year-old woman in January and claimed to be mainland Chinese police officer investigating fraud case
- Money sent to five bank accounts in more than 20 transactions over three months, with woman only calling police after ‘security official’ stopped replying, source adds
A source familiar with the case on Thursday said the 67-year-old woman had fallen prey to the scam after receiving a phone call on January 22 from a man posing as an official from a public security bureau across the border.
The insider said the “police officer” accused the retiree of being involved in a fraud case, ordering her to “cooperate and keep the investigation confidential”.
The woman, who lives in a luxury flat in the Mid-Levels, was then instructed to transfer money into several designated bank accounts for investigative purposes.
“Over the past three months, she was ordered to transfer HK$18 million into five designated bank accounts over more than 20 transactions,” the source said.
The source said the money had been transferred out of the five bank accounts involved, and officers were trying to trace the final destination of the cash.
Police are treating the case as “obtaining property by deception” – an offence punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Detectives from the force’s Central criminal investigating unit are looking into the case. No arrests have been made so far.
The fake-official ruse is one of the three most common phone scams in the city. The other two are bogus kidnappings and the “guess-who-I-am” deception, the latter of which usually involves swindlers impersonating relatives.
The first of the three sees swindlers posing as mainland security officers and accusing victims of breaking the law. They then ask for money as surety or make other excuses to get their targets to hand over cash or surrender bank details.
Hong Kong police have warned the public that “genuine law enforcement officers will not ask for your bank account password in investigation of cases, or ask you to transfer money to designated bank accounts”.
Police advise the public to use the force’s “Scameter” search engine, accessible through the CyberDefender website or app, to check for suspicious or fraudulent schemes.
The search engine contains information that can help users identify suspicious web addresses, emails, platform usernames, bank accounts, mobile phone numbers and IP addresses.
