Police have said they recorded 215 cases of “naked chat blackmail” involving student victims in the first half of this year. - Photo: Jelly Tse / SCMP
HONG KONG: Hong Kong students as young as 11 years old accounted for a fifth of the victims of “naked-chat blackmail” in the first half of this year, prompting police on Monday to warn residents to be cautious while meeting people online.
The crime typically involves scammers luring victims into disrobing during video chats and then threatening to circulate the naked pictures as well as videos to extort money, police said.
Criminals also employed a “scattergun approach” to befriend their targets via social media platforms and adopted various tactics to groom children for sexual exploitation while intimidating them into silence, the force added.
According to police, a 13-year-old girl recently met a male friend online through social media. He eventually built rapport with the girl under the “guise of sharing study tips” after chatting online with her several times.
“He later claimed that he could offer her tutoring and arranged a meeting, upon which he took her to a hotel and attempted to rape her,” the force said on its CyberDefender website, an initiative to educate residents about online dangers.
Hong Kong police have arrested 30 people in connection to a total of 37 compensated dating and naked chat blackmail scams with losses totaling some HK$2 million.
The victims also included 36 men and one woman aged 18 to 70, many of whom are students, engineers and professionals.
The loss in a single case could range from HK$500 to as much as HK$550,000, police said.
Police said the syndicate would instruct members to use fake identity card numbers, phone numbers and credit card information to book a hotel room and send the reservation to their potential victims.
The members then requested the victims to pay half of the fee for the hotel room, leading the victims to believe that the members could truly provide compensated dating services. As the amount of losses were low, the victims would be embarrassed and choose not to report to the police.
Police also identified a rising trend among teenagers falling victim to such scams. Forty per cent of victims are aged 22 to 30 and about 30 per cent are male students aged 13 to 21. Their education levels range from secondary one to fourth-year in university.
On another note, a survey conducted by the Hong Kong Playground Association between March and June found that only 47 percent of over 4,000 teenagers and children interviewed would seek help from their parents if they fell victim to online scams.
A total of 1 826 cases of blackmail were recorded, representing an increase of 234 cases (+14.7%) when compared with last year. The surge was mainly attributed to “naked chat” blackmail, totalling 1 402 cases.
In a bid to step up the publicity work, Police hosted a large-scale campaign, Cyber Security Expo 2022 last year. A cyber security campaign named All-round CyberDefender is now being held.
Hong Kong police also have warned criminals are taking advantage of young residents in a wide range of cybercrime and deception activities, with more than 900 students falling victim to “naked-chat blackmail” and dating scams last year.
The figure was in sharp focus on Monday as the force launched the third edition of its crime prevention booklet for young people, with 50,000 copies to be distributed to schools and youth service centres.
Commissioner of Police Raymond Siu Chak-yee said cybercrime was on the rise globally as people increasingly went online for activities such as shopping, investing and dating.
“Cybercrime affects people of all ages, they not only fall prey to those crimes but are also used [by criminals] to aid those activities,” he said.
“But [police] have fewer opportunities to come in contact with young people compared with teachers, social workers and parents, so we need to work together to help deliver our knowledge and messages.”
Meanhile, the police also say they believe they've helped to bring down a mainland gang that has been blackmailing men in Hong Kong by threatening to send naked photos and sex videos of them to their family members and friends.
Officers on Friday said they believe a gang based in Jiangxi province took hundreds of thousands of dollars from 31 Hong Kong victims between August 2021 and April this year.
Those targeted in the "sextortion" scam were gay men, aged between 18 and 54.
One man, 33, is said to have lost over HK$220,000, using up all his savings and also borrowing money from relatives.
Officers said the con artists tricked people they met through dating apps into downloading malicious software which stole their mobile phone contacts.
The gang then threatened to send photos and videos obtained through "naked-chats" to their victims' families and friends unless they paid ransoms in the form of gift cards.
The force's investigation stemmed from an operation to identify and remove botnet servers and phishing websites after one server was found to have been used for naked-chat blackmailing.
Superintendent Wilson Tam from the police's cyber security and technology crime bureau said naked-chat blackmail cases are on the rise and the victims are getting younger.
"People tend to know other persons through the internet or on social media platforms rather than going out to meet friends," he said.
"Using social media or the internet platforms to make friends is not a big problem. But we do need to have more publication on the protection of internet users."
Officers said mainland police have arrested 12 people in Ganzhou since April in connection with the cases.
They also believe the syndicate is linked to at least 19 similar offences in Malaysia and Singapore, and the relevant information has been passed to Interpol.
There were 708 naked-chat blackmail cases in Hong Kong in the first half of this year, 43 per cent more than the same period last year. More than 60 per cent of the suspected victims were aged under 30, with the youngest only 11.
The youngest victim was an 11-year-old boy who met a “woman” on a dating app. As the two exchanged texts, the boy was persuaded to download a “video chat” app that turned out to be malware that ended up extracting his mother’s contact information from his phone.
Scammers took naked pictures and videos of the boy during the video chats, before sending the content to his mother and demanding she pay HK$10,000 (US$1,275) or else the footage would be made public.
Police have not been able to track down the perpetrators since the case was first reported in May. The investigation is still ongoing.
Hong Kong students made up a fifth of the victims of online blackmail cases involving naked photos in the first half of the year, including an 11-year-old boy who was lured into downloading an app that implanted malware on his smartphone, police revealed.
The force said it wanted to raise awareness among young people to guard them against predators as 24 cases of sexual abuse in the first six months of the year involved victims under the age of 16 who had met the perpetrators online.
nternet scams are often concealed and cross-border in nature with a money flow that poses a lot of challenges to investigators, said the police, adding that officers had to constantly evolve their strategies to tackle fraudsters’ ever-changing tactics.
The 24 cases also included a girl who was found to have had sex with a man in 2021 when she was nine years old after meeting him on a dating app. The man had videotaped the encounter at his home, according to police.
Cops said the case came to light earlier this year, when police were investigating a separate allegation of physical abuse suffered by the girl. The suspect has since been arrested and is being held in custody pending trial.
Hong Kong police had said that teachers and parents should be conscious of the threats children might face, the most important factor was raising awareness among teenagers about potential predators on online dating apps and mobile game chat rooms. Young people should also hone their ability to verify information presented to them.
Hong Kong cops also said the cybersecurity division said it was aiming to raise awareness of the issue through an online simulation game and a cybersecurity solution design competition that was open to all students in Hong Kong, Macau and nearby cities in Guangdong province. - Agencies
