A local woman was defrauded out of HK$3 million after trusting her online “boyfriend” and investing in cryptocurrencies on his advice, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Ho Chan Lam said during a regular press conference on Monday.
Chong said that the victim is in her fifties and told the police that she’s a clerk. Chong did not reveal the victim’s marital status.
According to Ho, the victim met a male netizen on a social media platform in March and they became an online couple in May. During their virtual relationship, the male successfully persuaded the victim to invest on two apps in “cryptocurrencies”, Ho said, adding that the victim bought “cryptocurrencies” worth a total of US$3,000 (24,230 patacas) from May to August.
Ho said that in late August the “customer service” asked the victim to transfer the “cryptocurrencies” to another app, but claimed that the process had an issue and from then on, the victim needed to deposit directly into the app’s Hong Kong bank account for buying “cryptocurrencies”. Meanwhile, her “boyfriend” kept urging her to invest more because of the “high profit”, Ho said, adding that she fell for it and kept investing multiple times until the “customer service” informed her that she needed to deposit US$500,000 to unfreeze her account.
According to Ho, she reported the case to the police on Saturday after talking to her friend. Ho noted that the victim told the police that she “forgot” the amount of money she had lost in the scam, but she estimated that she spent around HK$3 million on “cryptocurrencies”.
