Investment-related fraud cases have increased in recent years. In order to avoid further harm and losses to innocent citizens, the police have published excerpts of real conversations between the fraudsters and the victims on social networking sites. The police pointed out that the scammers will first deceive the trust and affection of the victims with sweet words, then take the victims into the investment scam, and then ask the victims to download fake programs to “invest”, but when the victims want to get back the money on the platform , the platform withheld the money and asked for a security deposit, etc., but the victim was still unable to get the money back.
It can be seen from the police’s public interviews that in the first step, the swindler will start with “sweetness”, such as “I’ll add you because I’m the first to chat with you”, “It’s a good fate” and so on. Later, the scammers will add investment topics in the love story, such as “the digital currency node is not bad at night, can someone take you with me”, “we can have multiple topics” and so on. Later, the scammer will ask the victim to download a fake program, and will allow the victim to make some money and taste the sweetness in the early stage.
But when the first money arrives, the scammer will use another excuse to defraud the money and ask the victim to put more money on the platform. In the end, when the victim wanted to get back the money on the platform, the platform withheld the money and asked for a security deposit, etc., but the victim was still unable to get the money back. When the victim found out that he had been deceived and confronted the swindler, the anti-villain first complained that he would call the police and said, “If I can’t get back the funds I gave you, don’t blame me for hatred.”
Since the beginning of 2020, online dating investment scams have emerged, that is, a combination of online romance scams and investment scams. By 2021, there will be 642 related scams, an increase of three and a half times compared with 181 the year before, and the loss amounted to 360 million Hong Kong dollars. Many people with investment experience or professionals are recruited. Police have analyzed that 21 to 50-year-olds are a higher-risk victim group, and women are particularly vulnerable to deception, with the ratio of female to male victims being 5 to 1.