Hong Kong police said on Monday that a woman in her 40s lost HK$1.2 million or ~US$153,240 to a crypto investment scam that was set up through WeChat.
The loss, which was equal to four years of her salary, came as authorities said that there had been more than 70 online investment fraud cases in the past week, with a total value of more than HK$80 million or US$10.2 million.
Crypto scammer steals a woman’s hard-earned money
According to a post by Hong Kong police on their CyberDefender social media channel, the victim met a man on WeChat who said he was an expert in cryptocurrency investments.
He promised her guaranteed, high returns and helped her open an account on a fake website that was meant to show fake gains on her investments.
The woman watched her so-called portfolio grow in value for about 50 days. She was sure the profits were real, so she did what the scammer told her to do and sent money to bank accounts and crypto wallets that he controlled several times.
The scammer told her she had to put more money than before she could take her money out. At that point, she knew that the price charts on the website were completely fake and that the scammer was in charge of all the numbers. Then she realized she had lost a total of HK$1.2 million.
Investment scams spread all over Hong Kong
The case fits into a bigger pattern. The Hong Kong police received +70 reports of online investment scams in just one week. The total amount lost was more than HK$80 million.
Fraud related to romance is also on the rise. In March, the CyberDefender platform reported that police data showed that online romance scams went up 8.2% in 2025, from 1,010 cases the year before to 1,093 cases.
A woman in her 50s lost HK$31 million in one of the biggest single-victim cases. A scammer who pretended to be a potential tenant on a property platform led her to fake crypto investments.
Scammers often start talking to people on messaging apps and second-hand trading sites before moving the conversation to WhatsApp or WeChat. They gain trust by sending daily messages, then they send links to fake investment sites and tell victims to send money to accounts they don’t know about.
Scammers are especially interested in cryptocurrencies because of how they work. Transactions happen quickly, are hard to undo, and mostly happen outside of normal consumer protection laws.
Chainalysis’s research shows that about 60% of deposits going into crypto wallets now go to scammers who use AI tools. This is a big jump from 2024. According to TRM Labs, the number of reports of scams using generative AI rose by 456% from May 2024 to April 2025.
Fake trading platforms and fake portfolio dashboards, like the one used to trick the Hong Kong victim, are still very common. Such websites look professional and show prices changing in real time, but the operator or the scammer is in charge of every number on the screen.