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HKD 250M Phone Scam - 90 Year Old Woman

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  1. #11

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    Is this not yet another case of the mainland system being so corrupt that anyone who has made or stored money there feels it's normal to get shaken down by a fake official? And/or the source of the funds being so dodgy that it's normal to be threatened through unofficial channels about it?

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  2. #12
    "A relative went to the bank to observe what the scammer and the old woman were doing in the bank, but she did not ask any further questions."

    "
    The old woman said it was for the purpose of purchasing a property on the top of the mountain."

    So no family members asked what property she was buying ?

  3. #13

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    hindsight is 20-20... if you are doing a legitimate transfer and the banks keep bugging on you to prove you are transferring legitimately or locks up your account once you transferred 30m out.. wouldn't you be screaming and asking what are the banks doing ? until the scammer was caught the lady never think she was scammed right ?


  4. #14

    with that amount of money involved, the family would usually have a "family office" because they invest all their funds. Surely they would have a designated team to handle the family transactions? unless they are all so loaded..anyway, I guess if you are a bilionaire $250 million is like losing $250 dollars, a drop in the ocean. They aren't crying over it so why should we ? I guess they will increase rents on property by 30 perecent and recuperate soon enough ???

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  5. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by dinosaurs88:
    with that amount of money involved, the family would usually have a "family office" because they invest all their funds. Surely they would have a designated team to handle the family transactions? unless they are all so loaded..anyway, I guess if you are a bilionaire $250 million is like losing $250 dollars, a drop in the ocean. They aren't crying over it so why should we ? I guess they will increase rents on property by 30 perecent and recuperate soon enough ???
    If all I had was $1000 then losing $250 would still hurt lol unless you mean USD billionaire. This story is bizarre and it's amazing how brazen the scammers are.

    And of course the absolute muppets in Tamar will use this as an excuse for real name registration of HK SIM cards even though usually these crimes involve overseas numbers.

  6. #16

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    Quote Originally Posted by Andy SNK:
    $250mil may be just a tip of her wealth.
    Of course this is just the tip...

    And why respond to such claims from 'mainland officials' if you have nothing to hide?

  7. #17

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    Quote Originally Posted by freeier:
    hindsight is 20-20... if you are doing a legitimate transfer and the banks keep bugging on you to prove you are transferring legitimately or locks up your account once you transferred 30m out.. wouldn't you be screaming and asking what are the banks doing ? until the scammer was caught the lady never think she was scammed right ?
    At what point do you think that banks should view a transaction and go "there is something wrong here". Are there no checks on inbound transactions?

    https://www.jfiu.gov.hk/en/str_screen.html


    What about something like this?

    The 36-year-old man was accused of using his 12 bank accounts to launder HK$600 million in 2019 and 2020.

    Acting on intelligence, Hong Kong customs began investigating the syndicate in mid-2020.

    Woo said preliminary investigation revealed the group had laundered HK$2.5 billion through 59 bank accounts between January 2018 and February 2020.

    “Over 2,600 suspicious financial transactions were involved. The biggest single transaction was more than HK$22 million,” he said.
    https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/...ted-laundering

  8. #18

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    Quote Originally Posted by vmlinuz:
    Is this not yet another case of the mainland system being so corrupt that anyone who has made or stored money there feels it's normal to get shaken down by a fake official? And/or the source of the funds being so dodgy that it's normal to be threatened through unofficial channels about it?
    In cases like this I always assume all the money comes from embezzlement in China so the "victim" doesn't think it suspicious that Mainland police will suddenly call.
    hike likes this.

  9. #19

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    Quote Originally Posted by shri:
    At what point do you think that banks should view a transaction and go "there is something wrong here". Are there no checks on inbound transactions?
    Beats me, but i am sure if a crook is to know in detail the full algorithm of a bank in their ALM effort, he will definitely be able to find a loophole to drip the money through and avoid being flagged out. That's the problem when countries like HK/SGP relies on free movement of capital to be that intermediary status/finance hub.

    If you guys have account in wechat/others, you might have encountered nice photo ladies just messaging you asking to be your friend and suggesting that she wants to invest inheritance through you etc. 'She' would ask for your bank account so that she can transfer money over to you and you can help her invest the money or transfer them to others. Requests like these, to some people might feel its riskless since the scammer will be unable to withdraw money from your account, are actually likely pulling you into their laundering circle to wash money around.

    So if the sums are not large, wouldn't it be almost impossible to detect ?

  10. #20

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    So if the sums are not large, wouldn't it be almost impossible to detect ?
    On a theoretical tangent - credit card companies can spot changes in behavior regardless of the large / small accounts and trigger alerts. Same with newer machine learning based analytics.