Police on Thursday said they have arrested eight men on suspicion of swindling people out of over HK$2.7 million by extracting their credit card details with phishing messages.

At a press conference, officers said in the past three months, the alleged syndicate had cloned text messages from courier companies, and requested victims to pay for purported “failed delivery” charges with their credit cards online.

Officers said they believe 183 people were scammed as a result, with their credit cards being used to pay for mobile phones, gift vouchers and other things for resale.

Superintendent Wilson Tam also noted that fraudsters had for the first time been found to use illegally acquired personal information to register for SIM cards in Hong Kong to send out the text messages.

"In the past month alone, the syndicate had used more than 300 SIM cards to send over one million phishing messages," said Tam.

The eight suspects, aged between 17 and 44, were arrested in a three-day operation that ended on Wednesday.