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Phone scammers defrauded Hongkongers of HK$126 million last month. Photo: Thomas Yau
Investigations into cross-border phone scams indicate some of the HK$126 million cheated from Hongkongers last month had been remitted to Malaysia, Taiwan and Macau, according to police sources.
The discovery prompted Hong Kong police to consider seeking help from Interpol to track down fraudsters, one source with the knowledge of the probe said today.
He said victims were cheated by phone scammers posing as mainland Chinese law enforcement officials to remit money into bank accounts in mainland China and the money was quickly transferred to many different accounts to avoid detection.
“So far, we have identified hundreds of mainland bank accounts linked to the scams,” the source said.
“Initial investigation showed that some of the money was transferred to bank accounts in Malaysia, Taiwan and Macau.”
Some Hong Kong victims' money has been transferred to bank accounts in Malaysia. Photo: AFP
In addition to fraudsters from the mainland, he said: “We believe people from Malaysia, Taiwan and Macau are also involved in the telephone scam.”
Saying that retrieving the money lost to the con artists was unlikely, the source said police would seek help from Interpol to identify the holders of the bank accounts involved in an effort to track down swindlers.
Police director of crime and security Lo Mun-hung was told in a high-level meeting with Ministry of Public Security officials in Beijing last week that the scam was “an industry in itself” with con artists working under a clear structure and division of labour.
It is understood fraudsters operate in teams of telephone callers, online technical support staff and money collectors.
The ongoing telephone scams prompted Hong Kong and mainland police to set up a cross-border task force to combat the problem.
Phone scammers posing as mainland officials cheated Hongkongers out of HK$126 million in 308 of 838 cases reported last month. There were about 460 such reports in the first six months of this year.
In the first two weeks of this month, police received 85 complaints with about 30 cases involving monetary losses.
Scammers pose as mainland Chinese officials, including police. Photo: Xinhua
The biggest victim of a telephone scam is a veteran soprano, Li Yuanrong, 73, who was duped out of more than HK$20 million. She reported to police last Monday
Li lives with her husband, Wang Guotong, 76, in Causeway Bay.
It is understood that the other victims to incur heavy losses to scammers included a doctor, university lecturer, businessmen, a security guard and a university student.
In a typical scam, Putonghua or Cantonese-speaking fraudsters tell victims they have broken mainland laws before directing them to bogus law enforcers or to government websites that show forged arrest warrants.
Li Yuanrong, 73, who lost HK$22.8 million to scammers. Photo: SCMP Pictures
The fraudsters who cheated a veteran Hong Kong-based soprano out of HK$22.8 million, the largest reported loss to date in a spate of cross-border scams, posed as investigators of "the biggest fraud case since 1949" and said her musician husband was implicated.
According to the husband, erhu virtuoso Wang Guotong, 76, the money was borrowed from banks and friends and paid as a "guarantee of innocence" after conmen made regular midnight phone calls for two weeks, alleging the couple might be involved in a HK$60 million fraud.
Their case was the most expensive of 838 reported to police last month involving bogus mainland officials.
In a letter to Wen Wei Po, Wang wrote that the scam began when he and his wife, Li Yuanrong, 73, received a phone call last month from someone claiming to be with "Hongkong Post".
The fake postmen told Wang a parcel of his had been intercepted by "Shenzhen police", to whom the phone call was diverted. The call was then further diverted to "Shenzhen prosecutors" who "questioned" him and his wife, telling them: "This is the biggest fraud case since the establishment of the People's Republic of China. The central authorities are highly concerned."
In the ensuing days they were told gangsters had opened bank accounts in Shenzhen and Taiwan using Wang's identity and travel documents.
Some HK$60 million was said to have appeared in the bank accounts of a fake foundation named after Wang.
"An old woman even committed suicide," Wang said he was told. "Don't you feel heartbroken hearing such miserable tragedies?"
The con artists then told him they saw programmes on CCTV featuring Wang and "felt very touched".
"They said was innocent and needed to pay a guarantee of innocence," he recalled. "The amount grew from time to time.
"I said I really didn't have that much money and I was willing to be questioned in Shenzhen's detention centre," Wang added.
"They said: 'Once you're detained, you will not only become infamous, but those detained criminal gangsters will keep hurting you until you die.'"
It was earlier reported that staff members from a local bank and a remittance company had warned Li about a possible scam, but she ignored them.
Wang said in the letter that only when he and Li saw news reports of gangsters posing as central government officials did they realise they were being conned.
The couple moved to Hong Kong from the mainland in 1991.
The police yesterday said Wang and Li's case involved the largest sum of any of the recent cross-border scams. Others who lost more than HK$2.5 million included a doctor, university lecturer, businessmen, a security guard and a student.
