A 70-year-old Hong Kong businesswoman has been conned out of HK$258 million (US$33 million) by scammers disguised as security personnel from mainland China while the Hong Kong police have apprehended 10 people connected to the scam.
The fraud was reported by the police to be the largest financial loss recorded in such form of scam.
Police stated on Friday that three of the suspects were arrested this year in February after the victim reported the crime and the other seven were among 254 suspects who were caught up in the police's 13-day clampdown on scams about telephone deception and online cheaters, this month.
Police said the victim, an elderly businesswoman received a phone call from a scammer who professed to be a mainland law enforcement official in February 2022 accusing her of partaking in a money laundering case.
The woman was told that she would be arrested and prosecuted if she insisted on cooperating in the investigation and she did so to prove her innocence.
She was aftermath instructed to open six bank accounts with a mobile phone app and also persuaded to reveal all the information of the accounts including the passwords.
She eventually transferred HK$258 million into the six accounts in around 2 years for investigative purposes as she was told. She was assured that all the money would be given back to her after the asset assessment, the report said.
The report said further that she finally realised that she had been duped in January this year after the meeting arrangements scheduled by the scammers to return her money were fake and later checked six accounts to find nothing left. She then called the police
The preliminary investigation by the police showed that the money in the 6 accounts had been transferred into 44 other bank accounts in the city and withdrawn.
70歲港商女子電話詐騙被騙2.58億港元
一名 70 歲的香港女商人被偽裝成中國大陸保安人員的騙子騙走了 2.58 億港元（3300 萬美元），而香港警方已逮捕了 10 名與該騙局有關的人。
警方稱，這起詐騙案是迄今為止此類案件中記錄的最大的經濟損失。
警方週五表示，其中三名嫌疑人於今年2 月受害者報案後被捕，另外7 名嫌疑人是本月警方在為期13 天的電話詐騙和網路騙子打擊行動中抓獲的254 名嫌疑人之一。
警方稱，受害者是一名年長女商人，於2022年2月接到自稱內地執法人員的詐騙者電話，指控她參與洗錢案件。
該名女子被告知，如果她堅持配合調查，而她這樣做是為了證明自己的清白，她將被逮捕並被起訴。
隨後，她被指示用手機應用程式開設六個銀行帳戶，並被說服透露帳戶的所有訊息，包括密碼。
據她所知，她最終在大約兩年內將2.58億港元轉入這六個帳戶，用於調查目的。 報道稱，她得到保證，在資產評估後，所有的錢都會退還給她。
報道進一步說，今年一月，在騙子退錢的會議安排時間表是假的後，她終於意識到自己被騙了，後來檢查了六個帳戶，但什麼也沒發現。
她隨後報了警。
警方初步調查顯示，6個帳戶中的錢已轉入本市其他44個銀行帳戶並提取。
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