Scams are increasingly rampant in Hong Kong, with nearly 28,000 reported cases last year – a 45% rise compared with 2021, involving a total amount of HK$4.8 billion. Scammers have endless tricks up their sleeves, and one of their typical ones is to impersonate staff of legitimate organisations, such as securities firms, banks, regulatory bodies or the government. To further convince the targets, they may even forge business cards, staff identity cards or documents with the official logos printed on them. They may use different excuses or reasons to approach potential victims, these include: falsely claiming to have found a problem with your account, introducing different investment products, inviting you to participate in investment schemes or join online communities, tax payments related, providing assistance for loan or new service applications, offering discounts, or updating your account under a new system. Through these tactics, scammers would obtain the personal information, account numbers, login passwords, or one-time verification codes of the victims, or trick them into making payments or participating in monetary transactions or investment schemes.
As such, if you ever receive calls, SMS messages, Whatsapp and Wechat messages or emails from unknown parties, stay vigilant regardless of the organisations they claim to represent, especially when there are requests or instructions relating to personal information or money. You should stay calm, think twice, and verify their identities to make sure you will not fall prey to impersonation scams.
You should not solely rely on the caller ID nor simply follow their instructions to verify their identities. Instead, you should try to obtain as much information as possible, such as their names, organisations, departments, positions, phone numbers or email addresses, and check against the official organisations’ records. Typically you can find the contact numbers of the relevant organisations on their websites, or look up the contact details of financial institutions on the online registers or databases maintained by the different financial regulators.
| Financial Institutions | Contact Information |
|---|---|
| Securities firms, fund houses and foreign exchange investment companies | Public Register of Licensed Persons and Registered Institutions (SFC) (Enter company names to retrieve company address, website, email, and phone number and email address of Complaints Officer) |
| Banks and Stored Value Facility Licensees | Hotlines of Banks & Stored Value Facility Licensees (HKMA) |
| Insurance companies | Register of Authorized Insurers (Insurance Authority) |
| MPF companies | Overview of Customer Services of MPF Approved Trustees (MPFA) |
We should always stay alert, verify information through official channels, and remind relatives and friends to beware of scammers. If you suspect you have fallen prey to scams, call the Anti-Scam Helpline 18222 for assistance.
