OK, so this is NOT the same woman but yet another DB housewife who fell for phone scam.

I previously posted about a 51 year old DB housewife who was scammed out of HK$8.2 million in November 2016.
http://www.discoverybayforum.com/cgi-bin/yabb2611/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1481343190

This time, a 42 year old DB housewife got scammed out of HK$10.3 million during the four-day Easter holiday of 2017. Ms. Lee reported the incident to police 12 days ago (April 26).

Despite the North Lantau Police Division putting up notices all around DB to warn residents about phone scams, this woman still fell for it.

The scammers pretended to be mainland police officer from Shanghai and informed the victim of committing a criminal offense. The victim was instructed to open a bank account across the border, to transfer money into it and give them the password so they can withdraw all the money.

This year 2017, there were 127 phone scam victims losing a total over HK$40 million. In March and April alone, over 160 reports of phone scams were reported to police, nearly three-fold increase from January to February.

In 2016 there were 656 reported phone scam cases and victims lost a combined HK$203 million. In 2015, there were 1,423 cases and total loss of $292 million.

No wonder phone scammers are so active, HKers are so stupid they have given away HALF A BILLION Hong Kong dollars in 2 years...

The biggest victim in Hong Kong is a 53-year old Yuen Long resident (Fairview) who was conned out of HK$58 million in October 2015. The next is 73-year old Li Yuanrong and her husband Wang Guotong (76), who were conned out of HK$22.8 million.

The typical phone scam involves a courier employee contacting the victim to inform them the parcel sent by them is in violation of mainland laws, then transferring the call to a partner pretending to be mainland police.


http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-crime/article/2090855/hong-kong-housewife...

Quote:


I'm sorry but that's really, really uncharitable.

The world is becoming more complex everyday, I wouldn't want to laugh at others for lacking "common sense," there's so much to know, and so much new knowledge generated everyday, and so much disinformation everywhere, I constantly feel unprepared and overwhelmed.

People in certain cultures are more trusting and compliant than others, it's not about intelligence, it's a reflection of the kind of social environment you're used to.  I'm sure it's stressful for her to become target of predators to begin with, why do we heap blames on the victim as a community?  What happened to compassion and solidarity?

I've heard foreigners said that Chinese people are so soulless, they treat scamming as a national sport and brag about how many people they've fooled to each other as routine greetings.  I thought that's just xenophobia and prejudice on the Internet shared between people who've never been here.  It saddens me that right here in DB, in Hong Kong, we are laughing at people that are victimized by criminals and predators, as though we have accepted scamming and predatory behavior as national sport.  That's not the HK I (used to?) know.

No, that's fine Ger, I'm curious about that too, asking these questions isn't victim blaming,(though all we can do is speculate.) Gleefully labelling them "so stupid" is what I find over the top.

I'm sure the phone scammers think HKers are super stupid. They've profited from half a billion HKD in two years alone. Isn't that a lucrative scam business?

In fact, if you search the news, you'll find many Chinese and Taiwanese arrested in the thousands not only in Asia but also in Africa running these scams.

The massive phone scam problem vexing China and Taiwan
(April 22, 2016, BBC)
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36108762

In comments released to state media, China's public security ministry said it believed the scammers were operating mostly out of South East Asia, Africa and the Pacific Islands. Besides the Kenya case, there were also recent arrests in Malaysia.

The officials claimed to have arrested 7,700 telecoms fraud suspects, of which about 4,600 are Taiwanese, in South East Asia in the past seven years - since they signed a formal agreement with Taiwan to jointly tackle crime.

Many of the other suspects are said to be Chinese.

In Pictures: Rough homecoming for hundreds of Chinese phone scammers based in SE Asia
(November 11, 2015, Hong Kong Free Press)
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2015/11/11/in-pictures-rough-homecoming-for-hundreds-...

The suspects, which also included Taiwanese citizens, are believed to be responsible for 3,000 fraud schemes in Hong Kong and 20 mainland provinces.

Better article explaining why the scam is so effective:

Online and Telephone Fraud Surges in Mainland China and Hong Kong, Officials Say
(August 18, 2015, The New York Times)
https://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/18/online-and-telephone-fraud-surge
s-in-mainland-china-and-hong-kong-officials-say/?_r=0

The woman and her associates seemed to know so much about her: Her full name. Her hukou details. Her phone number. Her date and place of birth.

And they were intimidating, issuing instructions in a way that many Chinese, believing they are dealing with the police and reluctant to challenge their authority, might find difficult to resist: Turn on your computer. Don’t call anyone. Don’t answer the door. This is top secret.

In the case of Ms. Chen, the callers told her to go to a website that they said belonged to China’s top prosecutor. It was a forgery, though its address was similar to the real one.

She followed a link on the site, as they ordered, and discovered what appeared to be a warrant for her arrest that included hard-to-get personal details.

In what seems to be a common chain of events, the fraudsters told Ms. Chen that she could “prove” that the money in her bank account was not from illicit funds if she transferred the money to them for examination. She was in serious trouble, they said, and this was the only way she could clear her name.

Ms. Chen said the police had advised victims not to demand that a case be opened. In China, asking for the police to open a criminal investigation is noted in a person’s “dang’an,” the personal file held by the authorities that accompanies an individual through life.

“The police told the girl next to me at the station, ‘You don’t want that in your file, do you?’ ” Ms. Chen recounted. “They said, ‘It’s so hard to find a job these days.’ ”

The implication was that the file would indicate a lack of intelligence, that one is easily duped or a troublemaker, and that no one would want to hire a person like that.

I wonder how these scammers operate. I've noticed there are special dialler programs used on Whatsapp to mass text incremental phone numbers to discover active numbers. From that I assume they try to weed out possible targets.

I can usually guess which incoming numbers are unsolicited. If I don't recognize a number, I will not answer it. Then I'll look up the number on https://hkjunkcall.com to confirm if it is indeed an unwanted caller. For the most part they are.

And yes, Coopergoose, internet makes info easily available. China has an extreme abuse of it called "human flesh search engine" where they can hunt down a person through social media. Everyone should take the time to read/learn about privacy settings in their accounts (be it email, Facebook, etc). And use a strong password. I actually know someone who had used "hongkong" as their password. Not surprising they got hacked.

Seems strange to me that you would want to focus so much on what's wrong with the victim when someone is victimized.  It doesn't matter how much "evidence" you can come up with to "prove" that the victims are "stupid," When an individual is harmed in our community and we get together to publicly discuss what's wrong with the victim, it is uncharitable. 

Oh look!  Someone fell into a well, let's throw stones at her!

I get those phone calls all the time as well, it's bad enough that we get targeted and harrassed in our own home, there's no need to make it worse by being sadistic about people who fall victim to it.

I don't think Chinese in general are more trusting, I think people in a low crime environment such as Hong Kong are less paranoid and suspicious, many of these scams are cross-border crimes made possible by changing technologies, not everybody is equiped to adapt to these fast pace changes.  No need to be sadistic about it.

you cannot prevent stealing of your data in 100% cases. Once I received a letter as though " from the government" . All my personal data was in the letter head, but the text looked like a photocopy and there was a paid stamp on the envelope ( normally such government departments do not pay post fee). After a short investigation together with the building management we found out that one neighbor just took a bank notice from my mail box and got access to my full name and some other details, sent a letter to me looking like it was from the government. There were cameras and securities in the block, but it did not help!

garmato wrote on May 10^th, 2017 at 3:31am:

Sure it had, but  anyway she took the letter in some way ( opened the mailbox with smth may be or just used some stick or hook- I can just guess) .  After that case I transferred most of the bills to e-messages. Much more safe , especially when you use your home address as correspondent address for your business accounts. Now I am thinking my company secretary sometimes sends me business documents by post and all my personal data may be there ( like in AR e.g.) . In this case I am thinking better to pay extra 5-7 $ and the postman will deliver the docs right to your door.

twinkleberry wrote on May 10^th, 2017 at 3:23pm:

Should be smth like " letter with notification", a sender should go to the post and arrange it. then they will deliver to you and you will sign a receipt card. If you are not at home they will drop a notice to your mailbox, then you may pick your letter in the post office. Price will depend on  an area and weight, if I am not mistaken.
As for the bills they send them to me by e-mail or msg, banks send bank splits only that do not contain your account number and statements, so what I can find now in my mail box is just a gas bill and real estate agencies leaflets. Boring? Yes!))) but safe

chair wrote on May 11^th, 2017 at 2:25am:

Will San Hing do it?

thanks for all that info

))) let the real estate agencies drop the leaflets, they do not bother me at all. I can see the price tendency and can use leaflets for BBQ fire starter later)))

Easy Goldilocks

Criminals pretend to be someone they are not to access individuals by whatever means.

People let their guard down for whatever reason and get scammed.

Our govt and our mgt office (paid by us) do not do enough to protect our privacy, give away access codes, allow strangers into our buildings who can put flyers of whatever kind, approach us at our front doors and pretend to be someone else especially those in positions of authority or in uniform. Cold callers get our numbers from institutions like banks and service companies which protect their right to market using our contact info.

I got a letter from the govt saying the Elections Bureau office computer lost data and I could be one of those affected (although they do not think likely).

They are making it easy for the criminals.