Woman loses over HKD400,000 in pandemic-related phone scam
A local woman in her 30s has claimed to have lost over HKD400,000 in a phone scam, the Judiciary Police (PJ) reported at the regular joint press conference of the police forces this week.
According to the victim, she received a call from a person claiming to be from the Guangzhou health authorities, stating that there was a problem with a phone number registered under the victim’s name, and that the number had been used to spread rumors and false information about the Covid-19 pandemic.
She told this caller that the phone number did not belong to her, whereupon the call was transferred to a second person pretending to be a Guangzhou police officer.
This second person provided the woman with a phone number and asked her to verify that it was a police phone number as he claimed.
The woman said she searched online for the number and confirmed that it belonged to a Guangzhou police station. A few minutes later the same man called her using the same number, causing her to trust that he was indeed a policeman.
The man then informed her that she was suspected of being involved in money laundering and that to comply with the investigation she needed to transfer all the money in all her personal bank accounts to an account in Hong Kong.
Complying with this request, the victim transferred a total of HKD407,300 in three transactions on June 1 and 2. These transactions were inspected by the supposed police officer using the online communication tool “Skype,” which he claimed was a necessary measure to guarantee that she was not hiding an account or withholding a sum in her accounts.
After this procedure, the alleged police officer asked her to also transfer the money in a fixed-term savings account which he had spotted during the video call.
The woman said that she felt that this was a suspicious request and decided to call the hotline of the mainland police. The mainland authorities then told her that she must have been targeted by a phone scam. She decided to file a report with the PJ concerning the incident.
No explanation was given on how the alleged group of scammers could have used a phone number that apparently belonged to a genuine police station in Guangzhou.
