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A cleaning worker with no investment experience has been swindled out of her entire life savings of HK$630,000 after falling victim to a fraudulent WhatsApp message offering effortless passive income, marking one of over fifty online investment scams reported in Hong Kong over the past week.
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According to a warning published on Thursday by the police on their CyberDefender page, the overall losses from these online investment scams have exceeded HK$30,000,000 in just seven days.
In this specific case, the victim received a message from a stranger posing as an investment expert who promised she could easily earn significant sums of money.
After engaging in further conversation, the fraudster successfully built a rapport with the victim and gained her trust.
The scammer subsequently persuaded the victim to download a fraudulent mobile application, falsely claiming he would manage Hong Kong stock trades on her behalf so she would not have to do any work and could simply wait to collect her profits.
Lacking prior investment experience, she trusted the arrangement and transferred over HK$630,000 into a designated personal bank account provided by the swindler.
Although the fake application initially showed profitable returns, the victim was blocked and unable to contact the fraudster when she attempted to withdraw her earnings.
Realizing the scammer had disappeared, she discovered that her entire life savings were gone.
In light of these rising figures, the police have strongly urged members of the public to ignore messages from unknown numbers and to utilize their Scameter mobile application to help evaluate the risks of suspicious contacts and transactions.
