Hong Kong has seen a rise in the number of older people falling victim to online scams, even as the overall figure for such crime remains stable.

Police say they recorded more than 9,400 scam cases between January and March this year, largely unchanged from the same period in 2025.

But the number of over 60s being taken in by scams rose to 1,264, up from 952.

Between them, they lost HK$530 million to fraudsters, according to the force's commercial crime bureau.

Superintendent Theodora Lee said the single biggest amount stolen was HK$84 million, with the victim a 67-year-old man who thought he was investing in cryptocurrency.

Lee said the man had struck up a romantic relationship online with a fraudster claiming to be an expert in investments.

"The victim had downloaded a fake investment app and transferred a total of HK$84 million crypto assets to the wallets designated by the scammer," the superintendent said.

“Finally, when the victim tried to get the profits and failed, then he realised he had been scammed."

Lee said many elderly people are coming across fake investment apps and tutorial videos made by criminals on social media platforms.

Those with the most education and experience in investing are the most likely to fall for the scams, she said.

“We believe that's because they have greater confidence in their investment decisions and because the scammers will use some very general and very true investment products to lure them into investing," Lee said.

"The scammer would share real investment tips for them, so they would have built the trust with them.”

Since March, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority has required banks to assess whether their customers could be in danger of being conned.

It is also building a machine-learning model to check for potential stooge accounts which criminals use to process illicit funds, executive director Chan King-wang said.

“We have already started collecting the account opening data from 11 banks. We are in the process of developing that model based on the historical data, as well as the confirmed real account cases data provided by the police. The model is already there, but the power of the model to predict whether an account is a real account has yet to be fully tested,” he said.

Chan added that the HKMA hopes to finalise the model as soon as possible.



Edited by Altis Wong