Commercial email fraud dupes 179 Hong Kong and overseas companies, bilking US$51mil in first quarter of 2019

Hong Kong police handled 887 reports of commercial email scams in 2018, involving the loss of HK$1.71bil. In 2017, firms lost HK$992mil.

Commercial email fraud duped nearly 180 Hong Kong and international companies out of more than HK$403mil (RM213.90mil) in the first quarter of 2019 – but one firm from Kuwait managed to recover US$17mil or HK$133.42mil (RM70.81mil) with the help of local police.

Police said on May 10 that the 179 businesses that reported email fraud in the first three months of the year was down 6% – from 191 in 2018. The amount of swindled funds, however, jumped 22% from US$330mil (RM1.37bil) over the same time, according to police.