Hong Kong Police Bust Group Running $46M Crypto Investment Scam Using Deepfakes

Hong Kong police have shut down a group running a HK$360 million ($46.35 million) cryptocurrency investment scam out of an office in the Hung Hom area of the city.

A total of 27 people between the ages of 21 and 34 were taken into custody suspected of conspiracy to defraud and possession of weapons last week, according to a police conference on October 14. Several were graduates in digital media from local universities, while others are believed to have links to local triad groups.

In 2023, reported losses from crypto investment frauds hit $3.96 billion globally, up 53% from $2.57 billion in 2022, according to the Internet Crime Complaint Center. The actual figure is likely to be much higher. In Hong Kong alone, scam and fraud cases accounted for 43.9% of all crime reported in the city in the first half of this year.

While such scam centers have been documented in other regions of Southeast Asia, India, Dubai and, more recently, Sri Lanka, the find was rare for Hong Kong.

“It is rare to find a cross-border fraud center that is quite large, well-organized, has a careful division of labor, and operates physically in Hong Kong,” said Yiu Wing-kin, superintendent of the New Territories South Crime Headquarters.

But while not common, it’s not the only case of scam operations making inroads in the city. At the end of August, police arrested six Malaysians and five local residents involved in a HK$61 million ($7.8 million) phone scam racket. The group had four centers of operation in Hong Kong.

Among the items seized in this latest operation were training manuals detailing how scams were conducted. Resembling a typical pig butchering scam, the group contacted victims on social media and tried to strike up a romantic relationship with them. They then persuaded the victims to invest in a fake cryptocurrency platform.

Police said that the group collaborated with overseas scam operations and computer experts to design the fake cryptocurrency investment platforms.