A 57-year-old man was arrested by police on Wednesday for allegedly obtaining property by deception from at least eight women in Hong Kong.
The unemployed man surnamed Chan, who holds a Macau identity card, was arrested in a public housing estate in Kowloon’s Yau Tong.
He has been accused of cheating HK$2.63 million (US$335,087) off eight local women aged between 49 and 62 over a span of four years, the Oriental Daily reported.
One of them lost HK$1.2 million after the suspect allegedly said he would marry her.
The victims were either single, widows or divorcees.
Acting superintendent Fan Chun-yip, of the Cyber Security and Technology Crime Bureau, said between July in 2014 to April 2018, the suspect looked for women on social media and in newspaper advertisements and befriended them.
After developing a “romantic relationship”, the scammer used various excuses to cheat the victims, either to lure them to invest in property on the mainland, or renminbi, or for marriage and a honeymoon.
Police confiscated nine mobile phones, eight luxury watches, cash totaling HK$40,000 and two identity cards suspected to have been forged in the apartment in Yau Tong, Sing Pao reported.
Officers believed that the suspect had pocketed all the money, adding that the suspect had met with the victims, unlike the “usual” online scammers that victims never meet.
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