Crime | Man reports loss of HKD340,000 in a cryptocurrency investment scam

A local man has reported a loss of a total of HKD340,000 in an online cryptocurrency investment scheme, the Judiciary Police (PJ) informed yesterday during the regular joint press conference of the police forces.
The victim told the PJ that he had met a woman at the beginning of December last year through an online dating mobile application and began chatting with this person through social media.
Later, the alleged woman told the man that she had made good profits by investing in cryptocurrency online and suggested for him to invest in the same scheme.
The man agreed to the idea and downloaded the software to invest.
On December 22, the victim contacted the investment app’s customer service and invested USD200 (HKD1,580) by remitting the money to a Hong Kong account. However, a few days later, the customer service told him that the money was returned to him but did not provide any further explanation.
He then sought more information from the woman who had provided him with the investment opportunity. She told him that the investment was rejected because the amount was too small and asked him to invest at least USD5,000 (HKD39,850).
On January 9, he made the investment as suggested and had reportedly profited from it. This resulted in him deciding to invest about HKD280,000 more.
On February 26, the victim made a final investment of HKD48,000 and, as usual, made the remittance to the Hong Kong account. But this time the customer service claimed that the money was not received. At the same time, the victim realized that he could no longer login into the investment software.
After several attempts to enquire with the customer service, which used several excuses such as software update to justify the problem, the victim was not able to contact the app service and the alleged woman anymore, making him realize that he had been scammed.
He filed a case with the PJ and reported a total loss amounting to HKD340,000.