A 39-year-old full-time virtual currency investor was "standardized" when trading TEDA in Kowloon Bay on the 6th of this month. He was brutally beaten and imprisoned by the kidnappers. On the 7th day, he managed to escape by taking advantage of the kidnappers' unpreparedness.
The police have arrested 13 people in the case so far, and 3 of them have been charged.
According to the news, the victim was seriously injured and is still in hospital and under police protection for 24 hours.
The police are still looking for four fugitives, including the two masterminds who planned the case, namely the leader of New Ngee Ann in Tseung Kwan O and the "buyer" whom the victim met on that day.
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The police have so far arrested 11 men and 2 women, aged between 25 and 40, on suspicion of kidnapping and conspiracy to kidnap.
Among them, two men who reported unemployed, Li Zongcheng (25 years old) and Liu Minding (27 years old), were charged with one count of kidnapping.
Another 31-year-old man Wu Zijun, who reported as a transport worker, was charged with forcibly taking people away or imprisoning them.
The three had already appeared in the Kowloon City Magistrates' Courts earlier, and the case was postponed until January 25 next year.
The prosecution revealed the facts of the case that the culprit forced the victim to surrender the password of the virtual currency online trading platform, and found and withdrew 5 million TEDA coins (market value of approximately HK$39 million) in the account.
Police operations are still continuing, and it is not ruled out that more people will be arrested later.
It is understood that those arrested earlier played different roles in the case, including guards, drivers, renters, etc., but there are at least four people still at large, including two principal offenders.
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In recent years, there have been cases involving virtual currencies.
According to police information, in the first nine months of this year, there were 853 fraud cases under the guise of virtual currencies, with losses exceeding 370 million.
Among them, the largest loss case in the first half of the year was 124 million yuan. A 30-year-old businessman was introduced by three investment consultants to a cryptocurrency to be issued. From February to April this year, the victim made two deposits into the designated account in total. After 124 million Hong Kong dollars, the fraudster disappeared without a trace when he later asked for cash out.
According to the police, the virtual currencies USDT, Bitcoin, Ether, Filecoin, Dogecoin, etc., which have been repeatedly used as scams, have recently been used by fraudsters to generate squid coins in response to the boom in online dramas. .
Due to the anonymity and cross-regional nature of virtual currencies, many criminals use virtual currencies to replace banks or traditional wire transfers as money laundering tools.
Criminals will also pay attention to the victim’s posts on trading platforms, such as auction sites, discussion boards, etc., selling cryptocurrency, pretending to be buyers using fake online transfers or blank checks to make payments, defrauding the victim to transfer cryptocurrency to fraudsters Afterwards, the victim found out that he had not received the money and eventually incurred losses.
In the past, victims met with buyers to trade face-to-face and were eventually robbed.
In January of this year, a 37-year-old man surnamed Li boarded the private car of two South Asian men and went to the sheltered area of Shan Chuiyuan, Tai Tam Road, Chai Wan, to deliver bitcoins. During the same period, another private car drove to four South Asian men. The man opened the car door and pulled the victim out of the car, stealing 3.6 million yuan in cash, and the police arrested 7 people after the incident.
In the same month, a female TEDA seller had a transaction with a buyer at a business unit in Kwun Tong and transferred 450,000 TEDA to the buyer on the spot. When she received about 3.5 million Hong Kong dollars in cash, she was caught by several people with knives and sticks. Man robbed cash and mobile phone.