Hong Kong police have arrested two men suspected of using 110 SIM cards to send phishing messages from a base of operations in a hotel and conning victims out of more than HK$500,000 (US$63,766).
The force said on Saturday the men, aged 31 and 44, were arrested last Thursday on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud.
They were allegedly linked to recent phishing scams in which fraudsters posed as delivery company staff, claiming victims had undelivered parcels, or as employees of online payment platforms, saying victims had to pay a fee to cancel an insurance plan they had mistakenly subscribed to. Victims were then induced to call a fake customer service hotline.
After victims called the hotline, the fraudsters instructed them to transfer money to designated bank accounts using various pretexts, police said.
“Investigation revealed that the suspects had bought a bulk of SIM cards with real name registration from different people,” Inspector Kwan Yat-hei of the fraud division under the force’s commercial crime bureau said.
He added that the suspects had rented a hotel room as an operations centre, where officers found a modem pool – a device that allows users to control multiple SIM cards simultaneously – nine mobile phones and 110 SIM cards.
Investigators discovered that the men had sent more than 2,000 suspected scam messages.
“We found some of the intercepted phone numbers were related to some recently reported scam cases, involving more than HK$500,000,” Kwan said.
He added that the pair remained in custody pending further investigation and that more arrests were possible.
Kwan urged residents not to call numbers shown in suspicious messages. They should also not lend or sell their SIM cards to others.
“If any SIM cards were used for fraud or other illicit activities, people lending or selling the cards were assisting with crimes and may be subject to criminal liability,” he said.
Under Hong Kong law, conspiracy to defraud carries a maximum penalty of 14 years’ imprisonment.
Since March 2022, all SIM cards in Hong Kong have been required to undergo real-name registration using users’ identification documents. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
