Investment scam cases in Hong Kong drop 15%, but losses remain high at HK$1.65b

Hong Kong recorded a 15 per cent drop in the number of investment scam cases in the first half of this year, but losses remained high at HK$1.65 billion (US$210 million), with police warning of fraudsters posing as representatives of legitimate overseas firms to swindle local investors.

Senior Superintendent Fanny Kung Hing-fun said on Friday that some of these firms of purported overseas origins did not exist at all, or had records of fraudulent activity in other countries.

“For some of them, even their purported person in charge or stars featured in their advertisements were generated by artificial intelligence,” Kung said.

“These so-called registered overseas licences were merely a guise for them, or the actual licence held did not allow them to conduct the kinds of investment offered.”

The single largest case in the first half of 2026 concerned a 67-year-old merchant, who lost HK$48.79 million from July last year to January this year in a pig-butchering scam involving sham crypto investments.

Hong Kong recorded 2,151 investment scam cases during this period, marking a 14.81 per cent drop from 2,525 cases in the same period last year.