A postgraduate finance student in Hong Kong has lost more than HK$1 million (US$128,652) in a phone scam, the Post has learned, as police revealed they had received over 1,700 reports of similar crimes involving university attendees so far this year, with HK$180 million in total losses.
A police source said on Wednesday that the victim, a mainland Chinese student in his first year of a Master of Finance programme at Polytechnic University (PolyU), was swindled on August 20.
“Recently, a university student let down his guard after seeing a scammer dressed in a police uniform and reporting a ‘public security staff number’ during a video call, which led him to believe he was involved in a fraud,” police said in a social media post on Tuesday.
“The scammer then persuaded him into transferring multiple deposits to a designated account for ‘investigation’. The loss exceeded HK$1 million.”
The victim remained enrolled at PolyU and the case was still under investigation, the source said.
Police urged the public not to trust others in video calls, even if they appeared in uniforms or showed arrest warrants.
“Mainland public security [officers] will not call you in Hong Kong, nor will they ask for money transfers or the submission of ‘guarantee funds’,” the force said.
It added that if a caller claimed to be a “public security officer” from the mainland, the receiver should “immediately hang up the phone”.
If residents suspect they have been cheated, they are advised to call the anti-scam helpline at 18222 to make an immediate inquiry.
Police statistics showed that the city recorded 1,711 cases involving university students as of September, with total losses reaching HK$180 million. Among them were local students who lost a combined HK$16 million, while those from the mainland accounted for HK$87 million in losses.
In one earlier case, a university student lost more than HK$10 million, the largest individual sum among student victims.
The victim, a 25-year-old from the mainland, followed instructions from scammers posing as government officials and made multiple deposits totalling HK$10.97 million into designated local bank accounts between April and July 2025.
Police’s Anti-Deception Coordination Centre stepped up the dissemination of anti-scam alerts on websites and social media platforms. It urged the public not to call back by clicking on telephone numbers provided in SMS messages.
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority earlier said it would enhance monitoring of suspicious transactions involving university students’ accounts by sharing a new set of fraud risk indicators with banks by the end of September.
The police chief also earlier sent letters to newly arrived students and their parents via local tertiary institutions to alert them to common scam tactics. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
