Hong Kong Man in His Seventies Scammed Out of Over 13 Million HKD by Fake App
A man in his seventies in Hong Kong received a message on WhatsApp from someone claiming to be a "cryptocurrency investment expert" from Singapore. Following their instructions, he set up a wallet and purchased USDT and ETH, then downloaded a counterfeit trading app provided by the scammer and transferred his assets to a designated address, ultimately losing over 13 million HKD (approximately 1.67 million USD).
The scammer gained trust by offering "favorable exchange rates, low fees, and withdrawals at any time"; the counterfeit app continuously displayed false data showing "investment profits" after the victim transferred funds, enticing him to invest more. When he attempted to withdraw, the app repeatedly refused for various reasons, leading the victim to realize he had been scammed—the earlier promise of "withdrawals at any time" was completely contrary to the final outcome.
Hong Kong police reported that over 40 investment fraud cases were received in the past week, totaling approximately 50 million HKD. They reminded citizens not to respond to unfamiliar investment messages and not to trust accounts claiming to be investment experts, urging verification through official channels and avoiding downloading apps from unknown sources.
This is not an isolated case: In July, the Hong Kong police revealed that the "Fun Coffee" cryptocurrency investment scam had over 1,000 reported victims, with total losses revised from an initial 94 million HKD to over 104 million HKD. Six people have been arrested in connection with this case; last September, a 66-year-old retiree was scammed three times through WhatsApp, losing a total of 6.6 million HKD.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a warning in September, tracking approximately 12.7 billion USD in funds related to "pig-butchering" style cryptocurrency investment scams from September 2023 to December 2025, with sources often linked to scam hubs in Southeast Asia. They urged banks and financial institutions to enhance identification and reporting of suspicious transaction characteristics.
The victim's USDT and ETH were received by wallets controlled by overseas scam groups after being transferred to the counterfeit app's designated address. The funds are typically laundered through multi-layer mixing, cross-chain transfers, and over-the-counter trading channels, ultimately flowing to operators in Southeast Asian scam hubs. Increased monitoring by police, banks, and exchanges indicates that the operational costs of such scams are rising, yet unidentified counterfeit apps and new wallet addresses continue to attract new batches of victim funds.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Similar patterns of crime, such as "sending unfamiliar messages, impersonating overseas investment experts, and inducing downloads of counterfeit apps," have repeatedly appeared in Hong Kong—over 1,000 reports for the "Fun Coffee" scam in July, with losses revised from 94 million HKD to over 100 million HKD, leading to six arrests; last September, a 66-year-old retiree was also scammed three times via WhatsApp, losing a total of 6.6 million HKD. This indicates that such scams are not isolated incidents but rather a repeated script targeting different victims.
The USDT and ETH funds transferred by victims ultimately flow to wallet addresses controlled by overseas scam groups. The logic of fund movement is to first establish trust with false "investment profit" data, inducing victims to continuously increase their transfers, and then using multi-layer mixing and cross-chain transfers to sever the tracking chain of funds; FinCEN's September warning indicates that approximately 12.7 billion USD in such funds are linked to Southeast Asian scam hubs, suggesting that the scam funds are primarily used to sustain the operation of the scam industry itself, rather than flowing into normal investment markets.
These cases are part of the same industrial chain as the previously exposed Cambodian "Prince Group" related scam network (whose CoolCash payment platform was recently sanctioned by the UK for its association with this group); the front end consists of "hunters" impersonating investment experts and inducing transfers via counterfeit apps, while the back end involves Southeast Asian scam hubs responsible for money laundering, fund dispatch, and repackaging. Currently, this industrial chain is in a phase of "front-end scam techniques continuously evolving and upgrading, while back-end fund laundering channels are gradually being locked down by regulatory agencies worldwide."
This is essentially a technological arms race between regulation and the criminal industry—when the efficiency of anonymous transfers of crypto assets continues to outpace the speed of cross-border law enforcement cooperation, scam groups can keep their operational costs low and outsource the money laundering process to regions with weak regulation; FinCEN and other agencies choose to issue industry-level warnings based on "fund flow characteristics" rather than individual cases, aiming to transform the identification costs originally borne by banks and exchanges into a unified compliance obligation for global financial institutions, tightening rules to force an increase in the laundering costs of gray funds.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
The entry point of the scam is personal mobile phones, and the exit is the cross-border fund chain.
The more attractive the false profit figures, the more excuses there are for withdrawals.
Regulators chase the flow of funds, while scammers chase the speed of laundering.