A master's candidate at a Hong Kong university has lost 500,000 yuan (HK$535,200 or 2.34 million baht) to scammers posing as mainland Chinese officials, who took her money then told her to travel to Thailand, prompting police to contact Interpol to rescue the student - the first time authorities have dealt with a victim being pushed to go overseas.
The force on Thursday revealed details of the case as it reported that the number of university students scammed by fraudsters posing as government officials or law enforcement personnel had risen from an average of 24 between July to September to 91 in October.
There were 874 scam cases using such imposter tactics in the first 10 months of this year, with total losses reaching HK$1.42 billion (6.22 billion baht) - more than doubled the figure over the same period last year.
Of the cases, 283 involved university students, with 72% coming from the mainland and the rest from the city.
"For students coming from the mainland, they might not be very familiar with Hong Kong upon their arrival," Superintendent Theodora Lee Wai-see of the police's Anti-Deception Coordination Centre said.
"Therefore, they might be particularly worried about losing their school spot or not being able to obtain maintenance fees from their parents."
In the latest case, the victim who had travelled abroad under scammers' instructions was a 22-year-old female master's student from Yunnan, known by the pseudonym K.
Scammers called K last month, claiming they were officials from the city's Immigration Department and public security officials from the mainland who were investigating her for money laundering. They told her she was suspected of committing crimes using her mobile phone cards and a bank account.
"The sham public security official and I talked on the phone for eight hours, leaving no room for me to think. In the video call, I saw the scammer wearing the uniform of public security officials and the background of their location also bore an insignia of the bureau," K recalled.
The student said the scammer then showed her a wanted notice from the mainland displaying her name, as well as other documents identifying them as mainland police.
The scammers said K should turn on her video call access for 24 hours, report her location every day, switch to a new phone and new number to communicate with them, as well as refrain from discussing the alleged case with anyone.
"They said they had restricted me from leaving [the country] and frozen my bank account. I believed that if I didn't comply with their demands, I would suffer more consequences, with my parents unable to pay for my maintenance fees," K said.
K was first tricked into travelling to Guangzhou to pay 500,000 yuan (HK$535,200 or 2.3 million baht) of "caution money" to avoid having her account frozen and her case investigated sooner. After she travelled to the mainland to pay the sum in cash over three days of bank withdrawals, she was told to flee to Thailand for her safety.
The swindlers then called her parents and demanded 10 million yuan as ransom for their daughter's release, claiming she had been kidnapped in Thailand.
Hong Kong authorities learned about the situation after the student's parents called the city's police after receiving the ransom threat. The force subsequently alerted Interpol to work with Thai authorities to locate the young woman, who could not be contacted after arriving in Thailand.
"This is the first time a victim was deceived into leaving Hong Kong. This has made our investigation much more difficult and complex," Jeffrey Lau Chi-fung, inspector of the regional public order event investigation team of Hong Kong Island said.
"We have conducted a series of actions, including investigate the victim's immigration records, her personal items, places visited before leaving the city and daily habits to trace after any possible leads to locate the victim."
K was found in a hotel in Bangkok three days after her parents made the report. Police officers learned that K was told by the scammers to check into a designated hotel in downtown Bangkok, before being ordered to switch accommodation after a day or two of her stay.
While K and her family incurred no losses beyond the 500,000 yuan handed over in Guangzhou as "caution money", K had paid for transport tickets to Guangzhou and Bangkok, as well as three nights of accommodation in the Thai capital.
Superintendent Lee explained that scammers exploited the commencement of a new school year to target students, reaching them while they were busy moving into dormitories and less likely to be contacted by their parents.
"Law enforcement officials will not under any circumstances ask citizens to make bank transfers or cut off contact with your family. If any official demands monetary transactions from you, they must be scammers," Lee said.
The biggest such scam reported in the first 10 months of this year involved a 71-year-old businesswoman, who lost HK$260 million between April 2022 and January 2024.
The woman had made multiple transactions to various bank accounts belonging to scammers to prove her innocence in a fake investigation into her supposed involvement in a cross-border money laundering case.