Hong Kong police log 15 per cent surge in scams in January, despite integration of anti-fraud app into major payment system
- Police also find 3,238, or 42 per cent, of all crimes logged in first month of this year were scams, amid city’s ongoing battle with fraudsters
- ‘Online scams continue to be the most common method of deception, accounting for nearly 68 per cent of our overall fraud cases,’ security official warns
Hong Kong police recorded a 15 per cent year-on-year surge in scams in January, despite earlier efforts to integrate the force’s “Scameter” fraud detection app into a major payment system, resulting in 180 alerts per hour over a three-month period.
According to the force, 3,238, or 42 per cent, of all crimes logged in the first month this year were scams. There were 2,817 fraud cases in the corresponding period last year.
“Online scams continue to be the most common method of deception, accounting for nearly 68 per cent of our overall fraud cases,” Undersecretary for Security Michael Cheuk Hau-yip said on Tuesday.
“The prevalent patterns still revolve around online shopping scams, including cases where victims are tricked into providing their credit card information, phishing and investment fraud.”
The surge in scams contributed to the 21 per cent increase in the overall number of crimes to 7,681 in January.
Other crimes that saw a substantial rise included thefts, which increased 32.4 per cent to 2,108 and “naked-chat blackmail” cases, which skyrocketed almost 15 times to 161.
Naked-chat blackmail is a form of online extortion where swindlers trick their targets into removing their clothes during a video call and secretly record them, before threatening to circulate the footage if they refuse to pay.