The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), the Hong Kong Police Force, and local banks announced a slew of measures on Thursday to enable them to better trace "mule accounts", which play a key role in the city’s climbing number of fraud cases.
The measures include helping lenders to flag accounts linked to scams by expanding information exchanges between the finance and the law enforcement sectors.
The city logged 44,480 fraud cases last year, a rise of 12 percent year-on-year. The increase in fraud cases has also made activities involving the processing of illegally obtained money more common, with 1,484 arrested on suspicion of money laundering in 2024 — 2.3 times higher than the 454 in 2023.
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At a joint news conference on Thursday, Chief Superintendent Kelly Cheng Lai-ki of the Police Force said criminal groups often use social media platforms to lure residents into opening “mule accounts”, and then utilize those accounts to process illegally obtained money. The unemployed, students and foreign domestic helpers are often targeted by syndicates to serve as “money mules”, added Cheng.
To help lenders better identify “mule accounts”, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, in collaboration with the Police Force, will share more data collected by the police’s anti-fraud application, the Scameter, with local banks, helping them to flag high-risk accounts and alert clients if they conduct transactions through such flagged accounts.
The monetary regulator also said it intends to expand data sharing between banks through certain revisions to the law. In the amendment to the Banking Ordinance, tabled to the Legislative Council (LegCo) on April 2, the government proposed establishing a data exchange mechanism between banks, allowing lenders to disclose information relating to accounts suspected of being used for money laundering or other fraudulent activities, on their own initiative or at the request of other banks.
HKMA Executive Director Raymond Chan King-wang said account and transaction data can only be shared on the proposed platform when there are suspicions they are being used to conduct prohibited activities and for detecting or preventing such activities.
Other measures require banks to proactively identify suspicious accounts and submit relevant information to police, regularly review the performance of their system for detecting suspicious accounts, and enhance educational efforts focused on raising awareness, providing anti-fraud tips, and combating “mule accounts”.
Chan also said that promotional activities will also be increased through the production of more antifraud educational videos and more regional outreach efforts.
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The Police Force has warned people against renting or selling their bank accounts, urging residents to stay vigilant against the latest scam tactics.
Scameter+, the mobile version of the police-developed antifraud system, was launched in February 2023. Its latest version has functions for automatically detecting suspicious calls and URLs, and a public reporting platform.
As of the end of March, downloads of Scameter+ had exceeded 940,000 — over 1.4 times the number than in the same period in 2024, with total search queries surpassing 8 million, representing an increase of over 1.6 times from 2024, according to the police.
Contact the writer at stephyzhang@chinadailyhk.com
