Police Set Up E-hub To Sort Tech Crime And Deception

Police said they have established a new centre to speed up the handling of technology crime and deception cases to effectively utilise investigative resources.

Officers said in an interview last week that deception cases have become the prevalent crime in Hong Kong, accounting for 40 percent of overall crime figures in the first half this year.

They also said since more people are reporting such cases online, the layout of their e-report centre has been revamped to allow people to fill in additional information which would assist the force's investigation.

Apart from a brief summary of the incident, people can also provide the bank and social media details of the suspected fraudsters, as well as transaction information involving cryptocurrency.

"We have found that most of the e-reported cases, particularly technology crime and deception cases, are correlated, such as from the same source of criminals," chief inspector Raymond Wong from the force's new e-crime processing and analysis hub (e-hub) said.

"So we use the computer system to conduct correlation analysis to find out the related case cluster and hand over to the investigation team for their integrated investigation."

The chief inspector said he doesn't think the role of the e-hub duplicates the force's anti-deception coordination centre (ADCC), which provides immediate consultation and support for frontline units handling suspicious deception cases.

"E-hub and ADCC will establish a liaison mechanism to complement each other. For example, e-hub officers will contact ADCC to intercept payments," he said.

Chan added that the e-hub may also analyse other types of crime in the future.