PolyU finance student loses HK$1 million as Hong Kong police record 1,700 campus scams
Force says student let down his guard and believed he was involved in fraud after seeing scammer dressed in police uniform during video call
A postgraduate finance student in Hong Kong has lost more than HK$1 million (US$128,652) in a phone scam, the Post has learned, as police revealed they had received over 1,700 reports of similar crimes involving university attendees so far this year, with HK$180 million in total losses.
A police source said on Wednesday that the victim, a mainland Chinese student in his first year of a Master of Finance programme at Polytechnic University (PolyU), was swindled on August 20.
“Recently, a university student let down his guard after seeing a scammer dressed in a police uniform and reporting a ‘public security staff number’ during a video call, which led him to believe he was involved in a fraud,” police said in a social media post on Tuesday.
“The scammer then persuaded him into transferring multiple deposits to a designated account for ‘investigation’. The loss exceeded HK$1 million.”
The victim remained enrolled at PolyU and the case was still under investigation, the source said.
Police urged the public not to trust others in video calls, even if they appeared in uniforms or showed arrest warrants.
“Mainland public security [officers] will not call you in Hong Kong, nor will they ask for money transfers or the submission of ‘guarantee funds’,” the force said.