Police on Monday urged people to think twice before turning to social media or web forums for financial advice after the force recorded around 3,500 cases of online investment fraud in the first nine months of the year. Officers said the losses reported reached HK$2.2 billion in total, although both the amount of money swindled and the number of cases dropped by around 20 percent compared to the same period in 2023. Senior Inspector Wan Pik-yee said there is a rising trend of fraudsters pretending to be police officers. "They opened some WhatsApp groups using our logo as their profile picture to persuade the victims to believe that they are really police officers and ask them to provide some bank account details to scam their money," Wan said. Michelle Yeung, head of investor education and stakeholder engagements at the Investor and Financial Education Council said more people have been scammed this year after falling for fake adverts online. "Listening or looking into the advice that is given on social media, I don't think there's anything wrong. But when it comes to asking you to join a group or click on any links, that's when it's really a problem," she said. "So with whatever information that we get from the social media or from online, it's always worth to look into alternative sources just to verify whether that information is for real."
