30 held over dating blackmail scams

Stacy Shi

Thirty people have been arrested in connection with 37 compensated dating and naked chat blackmail cases that saw victims scammed out of a total of HK$2 million.

The victims included 36 men and one woman aged 18 to 70, many of whom are students, engineers and professionals, with losses ranging from HK$500 to as much as HK$550,000.

The 23 men and seven women arrested, aged between 19 and 56, were picked up in a 22-day police operation launched on November 1. They were mostly unemployed.

Officers also seized mobile phones and bank documents during the operation.

Wong Tai Sin crime squad senior inspector Mak Ling-fung said the syndicate would instruct members to use fake identity card numbers, phone numbers and credit card information to book a hotel room and send the reservation to their potential victims.

The victims were then required to pay half of the hotel room fee, and most of them chose not to report to police when they found they were being scammed due to the small amount of losses and out of embarrassment.

In the most serious case, a 33-year-old businessman met a bar waitress through a dating app in May, who initially charged him HK$3,200 for compensated dating services.

But scammers asked him to make 10 transfers totaling HK$550,000 within five days, citing excuses such as needing a deposit for surety.

Two people were arrested over this case including the holder of a stooge account and a mobile phone SIM card registrant.

Mak added the police also noticed a trend of younger victims getting caught up in such scams, including a 13-year-old boy. "The victims were generally younger men, with 40 percent of them aged between 22 and 30, and 30 percent students aged between 13 and 21."

These younger victims' curiosity about compensated dating and naked chats, coupled with the fear of the incidents being exposed, often resulted in adult intervention at a later stage, Mak said.

Hong Kong Playground Association's "New Horizons" Community Support Service Scheme director Wandy Wan said only 47 percent of children and adolescents would seek parents for help when they fell into online traps, and called parents to pay more attention to the Internet use of their children.