Financial News
Written by: Liu Shaolan
2021-05-26 22:10
The last update date: 2021-05-26 22:10
According to a document submitted by the Security Bureau to the Security Affairs Panel of the Legislative Council, an account of the recent fraud cases.
The number of investment scams in Hong Kong in the first quarter of this year reached 297, more than half of the number of similar scams last year. The amount of investment scams involved was as high as 1.935 billion yuan, a surge of more than 34 times compared with the 55.1 million yuan in the same period last year, and even reached the total amount last year. The annual loss is about 1.3 times of 856 million yuan.
According to the Security Bureau, in recent years, most scammers have used social media platforms to contact victims, and even use the image of "good-looking men and beautiful women" to "shock cold and warm" to gain trust from victims.
The scammer will later trick the victim into making various investments that are falsely called high-return, low-risk, and even capital-guaranteed investments, but in the end the victim often does not get any return on investment and will lose all of the principal in a short period of time; Some scammers will give the victim a small amount in the initial stage, which is falsely called "return", inducing the victim to increase the amount of investment, and eventually defraud all the principal and return.
The Police Force stated that between last year and March this year, 58 investment fraud cases were detected and 181 people were arrested. The total amount of losses involved exceeded 2.33 billion yuan.
The police added that the fraudsters used a wide variety of investment tools as a cover for fraud, including financial products, partnership businesses, commodities, foreign exchange, overseas properties and even virtual currencies.
Investment scams involving virtual currencies in the full year of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021 accounted for approximately 45% and 55% of all investment scams, respectively.
Virtual currency
