Police have recorded more than 600 cases of online shopping scams within the past two weeks, involving losses exceeding HK$17 million. Notably, more than 250 of these cases pertained to ticketing services, including concerts, theme parks, flights and hotels.
Among the victims targeted was an individual who fell prey to fraudulent agents purporting to be representatives of the travel agency Texpert as well as Cathay Pacific. The impostors advertised "buy one, get one free" offers, leading the victim to incur losses totaling HK$600,000.
The victim initially engaged with the fraudulent agents via WhatsApp after clicking on a counterfeit advertisement that promoted "Buy One Get One Free Round-Trip Tickets of Cathay Pacific" on Facebook.
The scammers requested that the victim transfer funds to a designated personal bank account in order to secure the ticket package. Following the transfer, the scammers falsely asserted that the funds had been frozen and demanded a subsequent transfer of an additional amount to facilitate the release of the funds.
After the second transfer, the scammers claimed that the transaction had failed and redirected the victim to a fraudulent Cathay Pacific representative.
The fraudster, impersonating Cathay's customer service staffer, utilized excuses such as "deposit submission" and "account unfreezing" to solicit repeated remittances from the victim. Ultimately, the individual became aware of the fraudulent scheme.
Police said the fake webpage plagiarized the real page's profile picture and images, and copied the content, looking similar to the real page. The scammer also lured the victims with "limited-time discounts".
The force reminded the public to be aware of the webpage content, checking whether the account has the authentication sign of bluetick, and choosing physical shops in priority to avoid being scammed.
It is also recommended to use Scameter, the anti-scam application developed by the police, to evaluate the risk.
