Green bond scam costs victim HK$74 million
SingTao · 3 SOURCESabout 2 hours ago2 MIN
Summary
A 59-year-old man in Hong Kong reported losing about HK$74 million in a suspected cross-border investment scam after being persuaded to buy a purported high-yield green bond product. The victim, described by sources as a foreign national and a senior executive at a listed company, or alternatively an expatriate employee at MTR Corporation, only realised he had been defrauded after dividend payments stopped and the fraudsters later vanished.
Key Points
- The case was reported to Hong Kong police on August 12, 2026, and Wong Tai Sin district crime squad Team 2 is handling the investigation as obtaining property by deception.
- The scam began with an overseas cold call in January 2024 from someone claiming to be a senior executive at a British private bank, identified by one report as HSBC Private Bank UK.
- Between February and December 2024, the victim transferred £5 million in seven instalments from two Hong Kong bank accounts to a UK bank account controlled by accomplices.
- From April 2024 to April 2025, the victim received 43 dividend payments totalling about £350,000, followed by another roughly £80,000 in June 2025.
- He later made five more transfers totalling £2 million between April 2025 and January 2026, bringing the overall loss to about HK$74 million.
Why It Matters
The case shows how fraudsters can use spoofed overseas numbers, apparently genuine bank-domain emails and small early payouts to build credibility over a long period. It also underlines the practical difficulty of recovering funds once money has been moved to overseas accounts with negligible remaining balances.