Hong Kong online investment scams surge 20% as losses hit HK$3.08 billion

Hong Kong recorded a 20 per cent increase in online investment scams in the first 10 months of the year, with victims losing HK$3.08 billion (US$395.9 million), according to police. Superintendent Theodora Lee Wai-see of the force’s Anti-Deception Coordination Centre also revealed on Monday that 83 per cent of all fraudulent messages were disseminated through Meta-owned platforms including Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. Overall, Hong Kong residents lost HK$6.43 billion to various scams over the 10 months, an 8 per cent decrease over the same period last year. Of the 35,831 cases reported, 4,515 involved online investment fraud, with these losses rising 30 per cent year on year to HK$3.08 billion. About 2,000 cases were reportedly related to WhatsApp, another 800 to Facebook and 400 to Instagram, according to Lee. Lee said common investment scams involved messages purportedly sent by financial experts offering tips or courses. The scammers would then lure victims to invest through fraudulent apps or websites. She said the platform would then ask victims to pay “handling fees” for withdrawals or entice them to increase their investment, in effect blocking them from retrieving the funds. The largest single loss amounted to more than HK$40 million, after a 52-year-old resident was duped by criminals impersonating a jeweller to invest in precious metals. More than half of the victims were aged 40 to 59, with many being professionals, such as doctors, professors and people holding management roles in investment banks, Lee said. A victim, identified only as Ray and in his sixties, lost HK$140,000 after being lured to invest in a bogus cryptocurrency platform. The scammer contacted Ray via an unsolicited message, claiming that the victim – who does not own a car – had parked in the wrong spot. After apologising to Ray for the mix-up, the scammer then engaged in regular conversation, posing as a Hong Kong stock exchange back-end worker who had helped build a cryptocurrency trading platform in Singapore. “She said she had seen behind the scenes how market makers operate in the cryptocurrency market and knew their tricks for making money,” Ray said. “She asked if I was interested, saying since I was about to retire, why not make more money to travel.” Ray invested HK$10,000 in the platform recommended by the scammer and successfully withdrew about HK$1,500 at an early stage. The platform later showed he had earned over US$70,000 in profit, but required him to pay HK$130,000 “profit tax” under Singapore law to withdraw the funds. After Ray transferred the amount, the platform operator accused him of engaging in investment malpractice and demanded another HK$290,000 as a guarantee deposit. That was when Ray realised he had been scammed. “I already knew many of these were scams and had encountered them before, but this time the set-up was very sophisticated,” Ray said. “[The platform] suddenly said I had won money and given that I had successfully withdrawn cash before – at that moment, you would believe it; it’s hard to be level-headed … Greed really leads to poverty.” Lee said that Meta’s overseas servers made it difficult for authorities to secure the tech giant’s cooperation in removing scam-related messages. She added that current Hong Kong legislation did not empower law enforcement to take action, and that police would raise the issue with the Security Bureau. “Currently, we can only notify Meta about problematic accounts when we receive reports from residents who are being scammed,” Lee said. “Without a proactive mechanism to remove the scam accounts, we will always be one step behind the scammers.” She said Hong Kong had yet to enact a law such as Singapore’s Online Criminal Harms Act, which allows authorities to direct social media platforms operating in the city state to remove scam content. Lee conceded that it was challenging to tackle online investment scams at the source, adding the force would work closely with banks to flag transfers to suspicious accounts and trace transaction records to identify potential victims. She also urged the public to verify the authenticity of the investment platform and to remain vigilant when it requested transfers to personal or “puppet bank accounts”. In response to the Post, Meta said it banned over 1.1 million adverts in Hong Kong for violating its policies on fraud, scams and deceptive practices during the first half of 2025. Of these, 91 per cent were removed proactively. Meta also banned more than 6.8 million WhatsApp accounts globally linked to scam operations in the same period, according to the firm. “Fighting scams on our platforms is one of our top priorities, and as scammers have grown in sophistication in recent years, so have our efforts,” it said.

Hong Kong online investment scams surge 20% as losses hit HK$3.08 billion

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}80 per cent of all fraudulent messages disseminated through Meta-owned platforms including Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram

80 per cent of all fraudulent messages disseminated through Meta-owned platforms including Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram