Mainland students lose $75m in phone scams as fraud cases top 28,000 in 2025

Hong Kong police received more than 28,000 reports of fraud in the first eight months of this year, with total losses amounting to HK$5.02 billion, according to figures released by the Security Bureau on Wednesday.

In response to lawmaker inquiry today, Secretary for Security Chris Tang Ping-keung said that of the total cases, 184 phone scams involved local university students and 86 involved mainland Chinese students studying in Hong Kong.

The reported losses were about HK$32 million and HK$75 million respectively, with the largest single case involving a loss of HK$10.97 million.

Tang noted that between January and August 2025, police received 28,379 fraud reports — representing a slight year-on-year decrease of 1 percent in case numbers and 14.5 percent in financial losses. He added that the police do not maintain separate statistics for student-related online fraud cases.

The most serious case occurred between April and July this year, when a 25-year-old mainland university student fell victim to a “fake official” phone scam, losing more than HK$10 million after being deceived into transferring funds in multiple instalments to several designated local bank accounts. Police arrested two mainland men in July and charged them with three counts of money laundering.

Tang said the police have not observed any significant increase in scams specifically targeting overseas students, but noted a recent rise in phishing messages impersonating food delivery platforms.

These messages instruct recipients to call fake customer service hotlines and are then tricked into paying “deposits” to cancel orders.

He added that fraud syndicates have also been using social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp to lure students into bogus “order brushing” schemes that promise commissions for completing fake transactions.

The Security Bureau stressed that police work closely with online platforms to combat such scams. From January to August this year, over 67,000 pieces of fraudulent content were reviewed and removed upon police requests.

Tang reiterated that the government will continue to strengthen public awareness, particularly among young people and students, to prevent them from falling prey to increasingly sophisticated online and phone scams.