Phone Scams Jump, HK$2.6mn Lost In Three Months

Police on Wednesday warned of a surge in telephone scams, with the number of victims jumping to 270 in the first three months of this year, will losses amounting to HK$2.6 million.

The number of victims for the whole of last year stood at 266.

Police said a new scam involves accessing contacts in a victim's WhatsApp and asking them to buy online game cards.

One man alone was cheated out of almost HK$120,000 in this way, said police.

Superintendent Mohammed Swalikh from the Cyber Security and Technology Crime Bureau said the scammers start by sending out random messages and becoming "friends" with the vicims.

They later ask these victims to forward a "verification code" as a favour and thereby get access to the victim's WhatsApp account.

"There are citizens who genuinely believe that these people are their friends," he said.

He urged messaging app users to step up their security settings and not to provide others with such verification codes.

Liberal Party leader Felix Chung was also a victim of the scam. The lawmaker said he fell for it because the message to forward an authentication code came from a friend, and he didn't know the friend's account was already hacked.

Chung called on the police to better promote these scam cases to raise public awareness against them.

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