"You have to always be suspicious and careful, otherwise it won't be like this."
Unaware of being scammed until a year after discussing her investment with her family, a 64-year-old housewife in Hong Kong has lost $908,000 after investing in a cryptocurrency investment platform.
Reportedly, one of the fraudsters who contacted the victim through the Instagram social media platform in July 2022 urged him to invest in crypto via a link to a fraudulent trading platform.
Along with another suspect posing as a customer service representative from a trading platform, they tricked the woman into transferring more than $900,000 into 15 bank accounts for crypto investments from August 19, 2022 to March 4, 2023.
After a long period of time, the woman became suspicious of the scheme as she was not only unable to withdraw her assets but contacted scammers including fake customer service representatives.
The string, the housewife reported it to the local police force earlier this week and an investigation is underway, after which detectives from the Western District of Hong Kong found that the name of the fraudulent crypto-trading platform was linked to a similar scam report via Scameter.
The platform allows many people to check for suspicious or fraudulent web/IP addresses, emails, platform usernames, bank accounts and mobile phone numbers, but victims said they were unfamiliar with the search engine when asked why they didn't do their due diligence on Scameter.
Although no arrests have been made, the police have classified the case as obtaining property by deception for which it is punishable by up to ten years in prison.
Last year, financial losses due to crypto investment fraud jumped 42.6% to $3.26 billion from $926 million in 2022 and it should be noted that the number of reports also increased by 5,103 in 2023 from 1,884 the previous year.
