Hong Kong Police Cracks Down a Pig-Butchering Scam Syndicate Involving HK$360 Million

The Hong Kong police announced at a new conference this week that it had crushed an online pig-butchering scam gang. 

The gang was purportedly located in Kowloon, Hong Kong. They obtained about HK$360 million in ill-gotten gains through this scam within a year. Victims were spread across various countries and regions in Asia, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Singapore, and Malaysia.

The police arrested 27 adult males and six university graduates and seized 41 computers and servers and 137 mobile phones.

The mastermind of the gang is a 29-year-old man who used fake job advertisements to attract university graduates majoring in digital media to solicit clients for a fake cryptocurrency investment platform created by his accomplices.

The arrested men used deepfake technology powered by artificial intelligence to pose as attractive women on social media and attempt to approach their victims.

Once the victims developed trust in them, the scammers persuaded them to invest in cryptocurrencies on the fake online trading platform. The victims did not realize they had been scammed until they found that the money they had invested in the platform could no longer be withdrawn.