Hong Kong’s online shoppers reminded to be vigilant as police admit they cannot help growing numbers of scam victims

The number of reported shopping scams has gone up by more than half in a year, and experts say the crooks are getting more sophisticated. But as e-commerce grows and grows in the city, many buyers don’t know the facts

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Online shop scams are on the rise in Hong Kong. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 8:15am, 5 Aug 2017Updated: 5:05pm, 8 Aug 2017

Hongkongers are being reminded to protect themselves from joining a growing group of online shopping scam victims in the city, as police favour targeting lucrative scam syndicates over one-off scammers.

Senior police officers this week insisted they had secured convictions in some of the biggest cases of shop scams, which involve the seller taking an online payment for advertised goods, but never actually sending the product.

But they admitted not keeping records of how many suspects have been arrested or convicted for involvement in online shopping scams specifically, adding that they rarely arrest a scammer unless he or she has several victims.

The police officers’ comments came after it was revealed the number of Hongkongers being snared by such scams jumped by more than half for the first six months of the year, against the same period last year. The number of reported online shopping frauds rose to 872 between January and June this year, up from 559 a year before, marking a 56 per cent increase. Comparing the same periods, the amount of cash lost in scams increased by 54 per cent, to HK$5.7 million. This followed a two-year period from 2014-16 when the number of reported cases was steadily falling.

Police said the new upward trend was driven primarily by the increasing popularity of online shopping in Hong Kong, rather than consumers becoming more gullible, but they said scammers are generally becoming more sophisticated.