Police have frozen bank accounts containing more than HK$1.5 million in connection with the case, but phone scammers had made off with the rest.

Acting Chief Inspector Lo Chun-kong of the New Territories North technology and financial crime squad revealed the victim was an elderly businesswoman in Hong Kong.

The alleged fraudsters played different roles and impersonated various mainland officials to make the scam more believable and trick the victim into think she had accidentally committed money laundering, he said.

According to the force, the woman received a phone call from a fraudster who claimed to be a mainland law enforcement official in February 2022, who accused her of being involved in a money laundering case.

The acting chief inspector said she was informed that she would face arrest and prosecution if she refused to cooperate in the investigation.

“To prove her innocence, she told the ‘official’ that she was willing to cooperate and help with the investigation,” Lo said.

The woman was then instructed to set up six bank accounts and transfer her money into the accounts for investigative purposes.

After setting up the six accounts, Lo said the businesswoman was asked to download a mobile phone app and also tricked into revealing the six account details and related passwords through the app.

“She was promised that all the money would be given back to her after the asset assessment,” he said.

The victim transferred HK$258 million into the six accounts over a period of 23 months.

In January this year, one of the scammers telephoned her to arrange a meeting with her outside a bank with the promise of returning her money.

The businesswoman realised she had been tricked out of the money when the “official” did not turn up for the meeting and she found the six accounts empty. She then called police.

Lo said the investigation revealed that the money was transferred into 44 other bank accounts in the city before being withdrawn.

He said the case was the tip of an iceberg and police took all cases into account and had spared no effort in investigating each report.

The number of phone scam cases dropped in the first quarter compared with the same period last year although losses quadrupled to HK$789 million.

Police said the city logged 474 cases in the first three months of this year, down 21 per cent from the same period in 2023.

But the roughly HK$790 million lost earlier this year represented a marked increase from the HK$195 million lost in the first quarter of last year.

A breakdown of the larger figure showed scams involving swindlers posing as mainland or Hong Kong officials accounted for 96 per cent, or HK$760 million, of the money lost.

Such cases typically see fraudsters posing as mainland security officers and accusing victims of breaking the law. They then ask for money as surety or make other excuses to get their targets to hand over cash or surrender bank details.

In a recent crackdown on online and phone scams, police deployed more than 430 detectives in the northern New Territories North and arrested 245 suspects between June 6 and Tuesday.

The suspects were linked to 179 reports of deception in which victims were cheated out of HK$540 million.

The 179 cases included 54 phone scams, 39 online investment frauds and 34 employment scams.

Lo said the suspects – 164 men and 81 women – included suspected holders of stooge accounts used by fraud syndicates to collect money from the victims.

“Cracking down on these stooge accounts is a crucial step in combating fraud syndicates,” he said.

The arrestees were detained on suspicion of obtaining property by deception and money laundering – offences punishable by up to 14 years in prisons.

Senior Inspector Lau Wing-lam of the New Territories North regional crime prevention unit said the suspects included students and foreigners.

She said criminal syndicates exploited young people’s desire to make easy money and the lack of local legal knowledge among foreigners to dupe them into selling their bank accounts for thousands of dollars.