Covid Partly To Blame For Surging Phone Scams: Police

Police have said the number of phone scams in the first nine months of the year has surged by 130 percent, on year, and that the Covid-19 pandemic has played a role in the increase.

At a press conference, the force said about HK$721 million was swindled in 1,687 cases in the period. That compared to the HK$667 million involved in 735 cases during the same period in 2021.

Ngan Hoi-ian, a chief inspector with the force's Anti-Deception Coordination Centre, said fraudsters have used people's fears over the pandemic to their advantage.

"I'm pretty sure that the scammers pay quite a lot of attention to the situation in Hong Kong. For the telephone deception cases recently, I think [for] 90 percent of the cases, the scammers pretend to be [officers from] the Department of Health. Just because Hong Kong people think that they may be involved in some Covid issue, so they would choose to believe them or listen to the recording," she said.

She said fraudsters would use different tactics to lure victims into their trap.

"According to our observation, nowadays the scammers are really good at using 'delay tactics', telling their victims not to tell any of their friends or families.”

She added this would delay the victims from reporting the scam to police.

A clerk in her twenties, who joined the press conference virtually, said she had lost about HK$500,000 to fraudsters pretending to be police officers on the mainland and from the SAR last year.

She said they had asked her to go to a hotel room by herself while they conducted an "investigation" and "trial" via video calls into a non-existent money-laundering charge.

"I didn't think it was a scam when it happened. After I had transferred the money to the fraudsters and left the hotel, I talked to my friends. They said they felt that it was a scam and made me report it to the police," she said.

Police also said they have prepared a multilingual brochure with tips on how not to fall victim to scams, along with a list of support services for fraud victims.