Not much has been publicly revealed about the 90-year-old woman at the center of the latest Hong Kong scam, how she gained her fortune or how she became a target. But he received a phone call in August from someone claiming to be a government official, The South China Morning Post reported. A few days later, police said a person claiming to be a Chinese police officer arrived at her home on the top of Victoria, the highland of Hong Kong’s wealthy elite, to deliver a cell phone she was to communicate during the so-called investigation.
Five months later, the scammers revealed instructions on the transfer of millions as part of the so-called investigation. She transferred her first million on August 12, police said. Between August 13 and January 4, she deposited an additional $ 31.8 million in the bank accounts of the swindlers.
The scheme began to collapse when domestic help became suspicious and alerted the woman’s daughter, who convinced her mother to make a police report in March, police said. By then, nearly $ 33 million had disappeared. It was unclear if the woman would ever recover a penny.
Chief Inspector Mok said the elderly were among the most vulnerable targets of telephone scammers. He urged the public to contact older relatives regularly as a way to reduce such fraud.
“We hope everyone calls the elderly more often, not only to show that they care about them and to remind them not to fall in love with phone scams,” he said, “but to allow them to get acquainted with your voices and the types of words you use. ”
Lennon Chang, a senior lecturer at Monash University in Australia and an expert on cybercrime in the Chinese region, said that older people who are victims of such crimes are often affected by feelings of shame. Sometimes they continue to follow the instructions of their scammers, who often promise to return the money, even if they begin to suspect that they are being deceived.
“They are afraid that if they tell others, they will be criticized for being stupid,” he said in a telephone interview. “They are afraid of being teased. They do not want to be seen falling into this type of graft, despite decades of life experience.