Hong Kong: Police arrest 6 members of phone scam gang that operated for months

Hong Kong police have dismantled a fraud syndicate and arrested six suspects who conspired to swindle at least 12 victims of HK$520,000 (2.24 million baht) in a series of phone scams since last November.

Officers on Sunday also warned schools to be wary of phone fraudsters after syndicate members were discovered in some cases having posed as headmasters or teachers and having tricked janitors into transferring money to them.

These victims only realised they had been cheated when they later called the genuine headmasters and teachers, police said.

The suspects, aged 23 to 44, were arrested in a series of raids on Friday and Saturday and included three domestic helpers.

The six arrests — three men and three women — were on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and money laundering, said Senior Inspector Luk Hung-kei of the fraud unit of the commercial crime bureau.

“The syndicate is believed to have been operating since last November,” Luk said. “As a result of extensive inquiries, we took action and arrested six individuals during raids at different locations across the city.”

Officers seized bank cards, mobile phones and SIM cards from the suspects and at their premises during the raids, Luk added. The suspects included two Hong Kong men and one man who was not ethnically Chinese.

The victims are customer service staff, security guards and clerks. In the cases, they lost between HK$5,000 and HK$130,000.

The largest loss, of HK$130,000, involved a security guard who was tricked into transferring money to a bank account he was told belonged to “a senior executive” of the property management company where he worked.

“The role of some of the arrestees in the cases was money mole,” Luk explained, meaning someone whom trolls paid to lend or sell them their bank accounts, and who would help to transfer or process ill-gotten funds at the behest of a scammer.

Luk cautioned the public against selling or lending their bank accounts for easy money or letting others use their personal credentials to open accounts.

“This might put you at risk of committing money laundering offences. The maximum sentence is a fine of HK$5 million and imprisonment for 14 years,” he said.

A total of 94,747 crimes were recorded by Hong Kong police in 2024, an increase of 5 percent compared with the same period last year. Of these, 44,480 were for deception, an 11.7 per cent increase on 2023 figures.