Hong Kong police cut off 2 alleged phone fraud syndicates said to have scammed HK$26.5 million

“The syndicate deployed so-called spies to meet the victims and instruct them to sign ‘confidentiality agreements’. They also collected money scammed from the victims or asked them to make money transfers for an alleged investigation,” Li said.

He added some of the ‘spies’ had shown fake identification cards during face-to-face meetings.

Li said the IDs and agreements were just props used by the fraudsters to fool victims into the belief it was an official investigation.

The force added the syndicate was linked to at least 11 cases of telephone deception this year, involving financial losses of HK$26 million.

The victims were aged between 20 and 87 and individual amounts stolen ranged from HK$260,000 to HK$8.5 million.

Li said the HK$8.5 million was stolen from a 43-year-old clerk who fell for the swindle after she got a call in May from a fake mainland security officer who accused her of being involved in a money-laundering case.

“She handed over HK$1.9 million to two ‘spies’ and transferred another HK$6.6 million into three designated bank accounts [in a month],” he added.

Officers rounded up 11 men and a woman in a series of raids across the city on Monday in connection with the scam.

Officers from the same police unit on Tuesday arrested five people in a separate crackdown on an alleged “guess who I am?” phone scam syndicate linked to at least six cases in July that involved total losses of HK$550,000.

“The suspects included core members of the syndicate and those responsible for collecting money scammed from the victims and lookouts,” Li said.

The force said the syndicate impersonated children or friends of the targets, made claims such as they had been arrested or hospitalised because of an accident and needed money urgently.

Police added all those arrested were suspected of obtaining property by deception – an offence punishable by up to 10 years in jail.

The number of phone scam cases dropped to 474 cases in the first quarter, down 21 per cent on the same period last year.

But losses were much bigger and quadrupled to HK$789 million from HK$195 million.

An earlier victim of phone scammers was a 70-year-old businesswoman, who reported in January she had been cheated out of HK$258 million – the city’s largest swindle of its type.