Giovanni Russo Police in Hong Kong said that in 2022, there were 2,336 cases which involved something called ‘crypto scam’ where people lost more than $216.6 million. Even though this was only 10% of the 23,000 reported technology crimes that year, it still was half of all the money ($407.7 million) lost to online fraudsters.
Hong Kong Loses $216.6 million
People in Hong Kong lost $216.6 million to cryptocurrency scammers last year, which was more than double the amount they lost two years ago ($407.7 million). At the same time, the number of victims from these scams also increased by 67%, with 1,397 cases reported in 2021 compared to 2,336 cases reported by the end of last year.
In 2022, about 10% of the 23,000 technology crimes reported in Hong Kong were scams involving cryptocurrencies (crypto). Law enforcement has had some success in stopping wire transfers from going to scammers, but it is getting harder to track stolen funds because they are using crypto more and more. This was revealed by an insider quoted in a recent South China Morning Post report.
Someone said that because hackers like to use cryptocurrencies now, the amount of money caught by police dropped. To protect people from related scams, Hong Kong police put out a warning saying be careful if someone tries to take advantage of animal lovers.
5 Million Stolen in Cryptocurrency Scam in Hong Kong
In an article from South China Morning Post, a warning was released after a woman lost a lot of her money to someone pretending to be selling a kitten. It was said that the scammer asked for lots of money across 40 payments before disappearing. There was also another case where an elderly man lost over 1.5 million dollars when he fell for someone claiming to know about cryptocurrency.
In Hong Kong, police have recorded almost 2,000 frauds related to cryptocurrency and over $118 million was stolen. Furthermore, there has been an increase in cases of scams targeting job seekers – from 1,063 reported incidents in 2021 to 2,884 in 2022.
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