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