The amount of money lost by Hongkongers in online shopping scams rose by 87% to HK$356m (£34.6m/$45.8m/€40.3m) last year, including one person who lost nearly HK$1m in a concert ticket scam.
Hong Kong police recorded 11,559 online shopping fraud cases last year which marked a 29.2% rise from 8,950 in 2023, according to reports. Losses in that year amounted to around HK$191m.
Superintendent of the police’s cybersecurity and technology crime bureau Chan Shun-ching stated that there were 38 cases where losses exceeded HK$1m.
Losses from fraudulent concert ticket sales alone exceeded HK$18m across 1,700 cases in 2024, representing 15% of the total number of online shopping scam cases.
“Scammers would post on various online platforms saying they had large amounts of internal tickets for sale, or even that they could obtain better seats via insiders or tickets that otherwise would not be available to lure victims in,” Chan said.
The largest case involving fake ticket sales took place between April and May last year, when a 40-year-old woman lost nearly HK$1 million from more than 200 transactions.
The victim initially lost HK$300 while attempting to purchase a ticket through a Telegram chat group.
She was then contacted by a scammer posing as a staff member of an entertainment company, claiming that she could buy tickets at a discounted price.
She was then persuaded to make 256 transfers over the course of a month.
Authorities in Hong Kong have been attempting to crack down on ticket touting in recent years, including the arrest of five people outside of Kai Tak Stadium this month.