A wealthy 90-year-old woman in Hong Kong has been fined $ 32 million by criminals posing as Chinese authorities – according to reports in the region’s largest telephone call.
The woman, who lives in a mansion in the fraudulent neighborhood of The Peak, was targeted last summer by fraudsters claiming to be public safety officials, the South China Morning Post reported.
“She was told her identity was used in a serious criminal case in mainland China,” a police source told the office. “She was then instructed to transfer her money to designated bank accounts to investigate whether the cash was the proceeds of crime.”
The source added that the victim “was promised that all the money would be returned to her after the investigation.”
A 19-year-old college student allegedly went to the woman’s home and gave her a cell phone to communicate with the artist, the source told the Morning Post.
As indicated, she transferred the large amount through 11 transactions into three accounts between August 2020 and January 2021, police told the office.
One of the scammers also accompanied the woman to a bank to do one of the transactions.
Police said the scam was detected after the victim’s domestic worker thought something suspicious was going on, and contacted her daughter from her employer, who then alerted police, Agence France-Presse reported.
Officials from the local crime unit in Kowloon East arrested the 19-year-old last month and froze bank accounts with more than $ 1 million, according to the South China Morning Post.
But the telephone fraud succeeded with the rest.
Hong Kong has one of the world’s highest concentrations of billionaires, many of whom are elderly, making them vulnerable to such scams.
In the first quarter of 2021, phone fraud reports rose 18 percent, with fraudsters pocketing about $ 45 million during the period, AFP reported.
Last year, a 65-year-old woman was defrauded out of $ 10 million following a similar scheme in which people pretend to be security officers on the mainland, according to the news agency.