A Hong Kong physiotherapist has been scammed out of HK$5 million (US$637,570) after falling victim to an online investment trap that involved helping a virtual “beautiful assistant” hit sales targets, police have said.
The case, revealed by police on Monday via their Facebook page, was among more than 80 reports of online investment scams received in the past week, with total losses exceeding HK$86 million.
Details released on police’s CyberDefender page on Monday showed that the local physiotherapist first spotted a Facebook advertisement promoting an “online investment expert”, which redirected the victim to a WhatsApp chat with a “beautiful assistant”.
The assistant, whose WhatsApp profile featured a professionally dressed woman, provided daily stock market updates and claimed that clients were making substantial profits through the expert’s advice, according to police.
The victim was persuaded to download a sham investment app named “SecuG Pro”, which was presented as a trading platform offering stocks at below-market prices. The victim was instructed to transfer funds to an unknown bank account to begin trading.
“Unsuspecting of any fraud, the victim transferred the money into unidentified personal bank accounts as directed by customer service. The ‘beautiful assistant’ then begged the victim to make multiple additional transactions to help her meet sales targets,” police said.