Police "CyberDefender" social media platform announced that over the past week, police received more than 250 online shopping fraud reports, involving total losses exceeding HKD13 million.

Recently, a victim saw a fraudulent "healthy meal advertisement" set up by scammers on the Facebook platform. Through the link in the advertisement, the victim contacted a "fake customer service" representative, placed an order and made payment.

Subsequently, the fake customer service representative claimed that the healthy meals were out of stock and requested the victim to switch to WhatsApp to process a refund application.

The victim contacted the "customer service" via WhatsApp to request a refund and provided bank information. The scammer then falsely claimed that the "refund failed" and instructed the victim to log into the online banking account, enter an "FPS ID" via the Faster Payment System, and input a "4-digit number" and a "6-digit number" provided by the scammer to execute a transfer.

These two sets of numbers in fact represented transfer amounts in the "thousands of HKD" and "hundred-thousands of HKD" respectively. As the victim rarely used online banking, the victim mistakenly believed the process was part of the refund procedure. After the transaction failed and the scammer disappeared, the victim discovered the next day that bank deposits had been transferred out, resulting in a loss of over HKD2.5 million.

Police reminded the public:
- Do not enter FPS IDs or numbers provided by strangers, as they may be fraudulent transfer instructions;
- For refund issues, contact official customer service channels directly and avoid using unofficial channels.

(da/j)

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