4 arrested in Hong Kong crackdown on SIM card scheme helping scammers create social media accounts
- Three jobless men aged 24 to 28 and 35-year-old woman arrested during raids
- Collection of more than 7,300 SIM cards registered with fake Hong Kong identity cards, allowing scammers to bypass real-name requirement
Hong Kong police have arrested four people on suspicion of using fake identity documents to register more than 7,300 SIM cards to help scammers open social media accounts, marking the first crackdown since a real-name registration rule launched last year.
The group comprising three local jobless men aged 24 to 28 and a 35-year-old Indonesian woman were arrested during a police raid on industrial and residential buildings in Cheung Sha Wan and Sau Mau Ping, the force on Sunday said.
Superintendent Wilson Tam Wai-shun, of police’s cybersecurity and technology crime bureau, said the three men were believed to have started acquiring a large number of mobile phone SIM cards from March last year.
Since last February, all SIM cards in the city were required to be registered using a Hong Kong ID card. The initiative was proposed to combat criminals using anonymous pay-as-you-go SIM cards to evade detection.
Using computers and modem-pool devices to connect online intermediaries, the group were able to obtain one-time passwords for scammers to create accounts on WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram, he said.
The modem-pool devices can house multiple SIM cards and send out calls in bulk, making the gadgets popular among phone scammers.
Police said the group had allegedly registered more than 7,300 of SIM cards using fake Hong Kong ID cards.