Announcements

To: All Colleagues

It is learned from the Hong Kong Police’s Crime Prevention Bureau that there has been a recent upsurge of ‘Telephone Deception’ cases in which some staff members of local Universities had fallen prey as victims.  In the past three months, a few staff members of local Universities suffered huge losses totally amounting to a few million dollars. In this connection, you are reminded to stay vigilant against the various methods employed by fraudsters to target their victims. 

In the recent cases, victims received unsolicited telephone calls purportedly from the Mainland Police which claimed the victims’ personal particulars had been compromised and used in illegal activities such as ‘Money Laundering’, etc. 

In order to convince victims that the accusation was genuine, fake warrants of arrest with victims’ photographs and personal particulars might be shown.  Invariably, the victims were urged not to disclose the matters to anyone else, under the excuse of keeping ongoing investigation confidential.

Victims were asked to prove their innocence and assist in the investigation by providing details of their bank accounts and online banking passwords for verification purposes.  Alternatively, victims might be simply asked to transfer money to specific bank accounts in Hong Kong or Mainland as security deposits for the ongoing investigation.  The self-claimed identity of the fraudsters vary from Mainland Police to Hong Kong Immigration Department or other service providers such as mobile, internet and courier companies, etc.

All colleagues are reminded that the requests by unsolicited callers seeking disclosure of personal banking details or transfer of funds to specific bank accounts should be handled with extreme caution and, in reality, all these requests were deceptive in nature.

If you are in doubt, do seek advice from trustworthy third party independently, or call the 24-hour ‘Anti-Scam Helpline 18222’ of Hong Kong Police’s Anti-Deception Coordination Centre (ADCC).  For more information, please refer to below hyperlink:

https://www.police.gov.hk/ppp_en/04_crime_matters/adcc/

Security Office

The Chinese University of Hong Kong