Hong Kong Police: Over 150 cases of WhatsApp account hijacking in two weeks, virtual currency exchange companies lost over 4 million Hong Kong dollars

The Hong Kong police announced that over the past two weeks, they have received more than 150 cases of WhatsApp account hijacking scams, with total losses exceeding 15 million Hong Kong dollars. Recently, an employee of a local company engaged in virtual currency exchange encountered account hijacking. The scammers blocked the original work group and blacklisted members, copied the group image, name, members, and profile pictures to create a fake group, impersonating a customer representative to request exchanges.

The victim, as per usual practice, first transferred cryptocurrency to the designated wallet of the other party. It was only after discovering that the customer account balance was insufficient and calling to verify that they realized they had been scammed, resulting in a loss of over 4 million Hong Kong dollars for the company. The police remind that WhatsApp groups can be forged, but the member phone numbers cannot be exactly the same as those in the real group, and the timestamps of conversations cannot be replicated. They also suggest enabling two-factor authentication and verifying the other party by phone before making remittances, avoiding logging into accounts on public WiFi or public computers.