Hongkonger in her 80s conned into buying 4 iTunes gift cards worth total of HK$3,000 in online romance scam
- Victim fell for the scam after she developed online romantic relationship with swindler posing as Canadian engineer, police say
- ‘Later, the ‘engineer’ asked her to buy iTunes gift cards so they could meet in Hong Kong,’ they add
A Hong Kong woman in her 80s has become the latest city victim of a romance scam after she was tricked into buying four iTunes gift cards worth a total of HK$3,000 (US$383) in exchange for a meeting with her “online lover”.
The woman responded to a WhatsApp text message from a swindler who posed as a Canadian engineer, police said in a post on their CyberDefender Facebook page on Tuesday.
The pair continued to communicate and developed an online romantic relationship before she was cheated.
“Love knows no age, but scams are the same for everyone,” the force warned.
It added that police should not automatically trust romantic messages from strangers.
“Later, the ‘engineer’ asked her to buy iTunes gift cards so they could meet in Hong Kong,” the force said.
The woman sent the fraudster the passwords of the four iTunes cards she was conned into buying.
The victim realised she had been scammed when the crook asked for more iTunes cards and made a complaint to police.
Police last Friday issued an alert to remind the public to stay vigilant against online scams after Hongkongers lost HK$136 million in 764 cases in the space of a week last month.
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Police figures show internet romance scammers cheated Hongkongers out of HK$632 million in 1,236 cases last year.
There were 1,533 reports logged in 2022 and the financial losses amounted to HK$697 million.
All the cases had striking similarities as the con artists would befriend their targets on dating websites or social media, but never meet their victims face-to-face.
Fraudsters usually pose as overseas military officers, merchants, or professionals such as pilots, engineers or doctors.
They develop relationships with their targets before they come up with a variety of excuses to cheat the victims out of money.
A businesswoman, 66, became the city’s biggest victim of an online romance scam in 2018 after she reported the loss of about HK$180 million to an “engineer from Britain” over four years.
Police advised the public to use the force’s Scameter search engine or mobile app to check for suspicious or fraudulent schemes.
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The app was upgraded in February to trigger automatic pop-up reminders on users’ mobile devices when they get calls from suspicious phone numbers or visit dubious websites.
The search engine and mobile app are designed to help the public identify suspicious mobile phone numbers, web addresses, emails, platform usernames, bank accounts and IP addresses.
The number of deception cases rose by 42.6 per cent last year to 39,824, up from 27,923 in 2022.
The amount of money lost went up by 89 per cent to HK$9.1 billion in 2023 from the HK$4.8 billion recorded the year before.
Reports of online technology crimes accounted for 85 per cent of all deception cases last year.
Crimes included online investment fraud, love scams, email fraud, e-shopping swindles and employment scams.
