Elderly Hong Kong Resident Falls Victim to Crypto Investment Scam, Losing Over HK$21 Million in Six Months

Foresight News reports that, according to the Hong Kong Police's 'CyberDefender' platform, over the past week, it received more than 40 investment fraud cases, with total losses exceeding HK$36 million. Among them, a senior citizen in his sixties was targeted after posting in an online forum, where scammers initiated contact through comments and later moved the conversation to WhatsApp. The scammers lured him into investing in cryptocurrency with promises of high returns, instructing him to download a wallet app, providing a fake investment website link, and requesting authorization to connect the wallet to the site for transactions. Initially, the account showed a profit of HK$920,000, which was successfully transferred to the wallet. Over the next six months, the elderly man made over 20 transfers to the fake website, totaling approximately HK$19 million. At one point, the account balance appeared to show over HK$42 million. However, the account was later displayed as frozen, and customer service demanded an additional deposit of over HK$7 million to unfreeze it. After transferring around HK$1.2 million, the man became suspicious and reported the incident to the police, ultimately losing over HK$21 million.