- A Hong Kong fashion executive was duped out of $764,000 in a scam selling kittens, authorities have said.
- The 58-year-old was asked to transfer bitcoins for delivery and insurance costs, SCMP reported.
- She sent money to the scammer via 40 cryptocurrency transactions over five months, the outlet wrote.
A Hong Kong fashion executive who thought she was adopting a kitten from Thailand was tricked into giving scammers more than $764,000 in Bitcoin, local authorities said on Wednesday.
The 58-year-old would-be cat adopter, vice president of a fashion company, thought she had reached out to someone looking to donate a three-month-old kitten, the South China Morning Post reported.
She made contact with the anonymous person online in April and continued to communicate with them via WhatsApp, according to the outlet.
The executive was told she could receive the kitten for free, but would have to pay transportation and insurance costs via cryptocurrency, according to a Hong Kong police briefing file sent to Insider .
She complied, opening a cryptocurrency account and sending the funds to the accused scammer’s e-wallet, authorities said.
Then the woman was informed that the cat had died during the shipping process. At the same time, another anonymous person posing as a foreign bank employee contacted her, saying she would be compensated for the cat’s death with an insurance payout of around $150,000, the agency said. police, according to the briefing.
There was only one catch: the executive would have to make another payment, this time in the form of a guarantee or an administration fee, according to the policy.
She followed the instructions, and by the time she realized the entire interaction was a scam, she had purchased $764,574 worth of cryptocurrency and sent it all to the fraudster, authorities said.
The total sum was transferred over 40 Bitcoin transactions between July and November. It wasn’t until January that the executive thought something was wrong and reported his case to the police, SCMP reported, citing an unnamed source familiar with the matter.
No one has yet been arrested in connection with the case, police said.
Crypto scams have been on the rise around the world in recent years, with losses in 2021 totaling nearly 60 times the losses recorded in 2018, the Federal Trade Commission reported in June. Scammers grabbed around $1 billion worth of crypto in 2021 alone, according to the FTC.
Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis reported a higher estimate for that year, saying $14 billion was taken by crypto scammers in 2021.
Pets are often included too. In April, New Zealand authorities warned scammers selling puppies using photos they found online, asking potential buyers to transfer more than $1,200 in crypto for purchase fees , transport, vaccination or insurance.
In 2018, Bitcoin scammers targeted owners of lost dogs in North Carolina, demanding ransoms for the animals despite not having the animals in their possession.
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