Hong Kong – A 90-year-old Hong Kong woman has been tricked into $ 32 million by scammers posing as Chinese officials, police said, in the city’s largest recorded phone scam. Hong Kong seniors are affected by phone scammers looking for vulnerable and wealthy victims who want to transfer money or make fake investments.
On Tuesday, police said the scammers aimed at an elderly woman who lived in a mansion in The Peak, Hong Kong’s most elegant neighborhood.
DuKai / Getty
Last summer, criminals contacted the unnamed woman posing as Chinese public security officials. They claimed his identity had been used in a serious criminal case in mainland China.
He was told he needed to transfer money from his bank account to someone he had in the investigation team for custody and control, the South China Morning Post reported, citing police sources.
Police said a few days later a person arrived at her home with a dedicated mobile phone and SIM card to communicate with the fake security officers who convinced her to make a total of 11 bank transfers.
For five months, the elderly woman donated a total of A $ 250 million ($ 32 million) to scammers, the largest sum ever recorded by a telephone friend.
Police said the scam was only detected because the elderly lady’s domestic helper believed something suspicious was happening and contacted her employer’s daughter, who alerted officers.
Following an investigation, a 19-year-old man was arrested for fraud and has been released on bail, police said.
The South China Morning Post reported that the person arrested is believed to have been the fraudster who showed up at the lady’s home with the phone.
The Hong Kong River is one of the most uneven places on earth.
It has one of the highest concentrations of billionaires, many of whom live in stately homes overlooking densely populated neighborhoods where poor families could fit into an apartment the size of an American parking lot.
With such a high concentration of wealthy elderly residents, the city is a mature target for phone scammers, many of whom operate on the border in mainland China.
Police say these scams are on the rise.
Phone scam reports rose 18% in the first quarter of 2021, while scammers pocketed some A $ 350 million during the period.
In 2020, police said they handled 1,193 phone scam cases where a total of A $ 574 million was stolen.
Last year, a 65-year-old woman was scammed for A $ 68.9 million following a similar scheme in which people became mainland security officials.