More Victims of Online Scams

One woman gave away a mind boggling US$23 million to a "British engineer"

We are still reading more stories of people being duped from online romance scams.

The latest one this week was a 66-year-old widow who thought her boyfriend was a "British engineer" and needed money for his business. So she gave him HK$180 million! (US$23 million) in four years.

Like seriously? Why give anyone that much money -- and on top of that -- to someone you have NEVER MET IN PERSON?

In 2014 they met on the dating website Lovestruck

It's unbelievable that someone would even do something like that, but she has and now police are investigating.

She met the scam artist online on the online dating website Lovestruck in April 2014 and they apparently struck up a relationship.

"The fraudster claimed he had financial difficulties with his business, and asked the victim for money repeatedly between May 2014 and July this year," police said in a statement.

The victim is described as "wealthy" and is said to run a real estate investment company.

During the four-year period she deposited money into bank accounts in Hong Kong, mainland China, Malaysia, Japan, Taiwan, Britain, and Germany in more than 200 transactions.

Throughout the period the fraudster claimed he would pay her back as soon as the engineering project was finished.

90 percent of women are conned into giving away money

It was only after the widow spoke to her family about it did she realize she was duped.

The police report in the last two months, an average of one report per day was made to the authorities about online love scams. Most victims lost between hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions.

While some of the victims were aware of online scams through the news, they didn't think they themselves were being duped.

"They could not believe they had been scammed because they felt deep in the relationship and did not want to pull out," one source said. The scammers were very good at pretending to be "considerate".

Some skeptical people are starting to think these online romance scams are ways of laundering money, putting it in bank accounts around the world, but then why cry foul about it and get the police involved?

At the same time it's hard to understand why women -- 90 percent of the victims are females -- would be so easily scammed?

There will probably be another victim reported next week...

Love Does Not Equal Money

Scammers take advantage of lonely women in Hong Kong

Hong Kong has a lot of lonely women. Part of it is statistically there are more women than men (in 2016 there were 3.96 million women, 3.37 million men), and also men prefer women who are younger, or may go across the mainland to find their mate.

That leaves some women in Hong Kong desperate to find someone and con artists are taking advantage of these lonely souls.

There have been 119 women duped by online romance scammers out of HK$75.9 million (US$967,000) in the first three months of this year, five times the amount of the same period last year.

They con Hong Kong women out of millions of dollars

The latest victim? A woman in her 40s who works in a financial institution and was swindled out of HK$14 million in a so-called online romance that lasted eight years, the longest scam recorded so far.

She first "met" the man in August 2010 in an online dating profile, where he claimed to be a white male and a film director. After befriending her for three months, he started to ask her for money, claiming he was detained by Malaysian authorities for being caught carrying £300,000 in breach of the country's laws.

He began by asking her to transfer HK$10,000 and then used various excuses to get her to give him more money. In the end she made a staggering 200 to 300 transactions in amounts ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Throughout the eight years, she never met him in person.

It wasn't until the victim talked to her family about getting more money (she had already spent her savings and borrowed some) that she realized she was duped and called the police.

These shadowy figures can hardly be found again

Official police data shows 93 percent of the victims in the first quarter this year were women, almost 12 percent of them professionals. More than 80 percent of them were between the ages of 31 and 60.

How lonely and desperate do you have to be to willing to part with your money? It's very sad to hear of yet another case of a women being cheated out of her hard-earned money, but this only motivates scammers to continue to focus on women here.

It also shows how warped their sense of what love is -- that it is closely tied to money. Another observation is that so many of these scams have been reported in the media and yet these women don't wonder if their so-called relationships are real. Maybe it's denial...

Lonely Hearts Lose Money Too

Hong Kong people continue to lose money in online romance scams

It seems many Hong Kong women are suckers when it comes to love. They are desperate for companionship and are willing to pay dearly for it.

Last year 235 people were swindled out of HK$108 million, more than double the 114 cases in 2016 that involved HK$95 million. Most of the victims are women, and more than 40 percent of them are between the ages of 40 and 50.

One such case saw a middle-aged woman losing a whopping HK$6.1 million in the biggest online romance scam the city has seen.

The scam lasted over 18 months -- and that whole time she had never met the man who supposedly loved her.

One woman recently reported losing HK$6.1 million

Through Facebook she met a man who claimed to be a retired American businessman living in Malaysia. He even sent a photo of a Caucasian man in his 50s. They later kept in touch via Facebook messenger, emails and SMS messages.

"After gaining her trust, he claimed he had HK$100 million in assets that was frozen by the authorities in Malaysia because he had failed to pay legal and tax-related fees," a police source said. "He then sought her help to pay the fees with the promise of repayment once the assets could be transferred out of the country."

The scammer managed to convince her to transfer HK$6.1 million in more than 100 transactions into several bank accounts in Malaysia during the 18-month period.

Why do women fall for such Machiavellian tricks? And with so much news about online scams in the news, one would think victims would realize they are being duped?

But some are too embarrassed to admit this or in denial that it's happening to them.

It's a sad state of affairs really. The more desperate women there are, the more scammers will prey on them. It's too high a price to pay for "love".

Hong Kong Casts a Romantic Spell

Jamie Chung and Bryan Greenberg in Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong

Yesterday on the plane I watched Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong, an indie movie that has gotten more attention for its romantic images of the city it's set in, than the story line.

Ruby (Jamie Chung) is a Chinese-American toy designer who is in Hong Kong for her first time and gets lost trying to find Lan Kwai Fong. Josh (Bryan Greenberg) overhears her dilemma and offers to take her there.

Hong Kong is a romantic backdrop for the plot

But as many viewers from Hong Kong have noticed, they seem to take a really long time to get there, as they started off somewhere in Soho...

However, they needed that time to introduce themselves, -- Josh in finance in Hong Kong for the past 10 years but really wants to pen a novel, and Ruby a toy designer who once had dreams of being the next Vera Wang.

There is definitely chemistry between the two (they are a real-life husband and wife), and it's refreshing to see the female character holding her own, pretty independent but also mature and western in her values. But the dialogue can seem a bit hokey at times.

Josh tries to give her the lay of the land, impressing her with his awful Cantonese when visiting a tailor shop in Chungking Mansions, and takes her to some touristy spots like Ladies' Market and Temple Street to have their fortunes read.

Emily Ting wrote and directed the film

It's quite amazing the two never sweat walking outside so much and that she doesn't freeze when sitting in the back of a bus wearing a sleeveless top, skirt and heels...

The plot twists involving the pair are interesting, but the real star of the show is Hong Kong -- the filmmakers have created a colourful and happy-go-lucky view of the city that us locals may have taken for granted or haven't really noticed before. The Avenue of the Stars in Tsim Sha Tsui is the perfect backdrop for romantic conversation -- but isn't it closed for "renovation" at the moment?

Nevertheless, the ending of the movie makes you wonder will they, or won't they (get together), and it hopes that you will like Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong so much that the sequel will have to be made...

Don't hold your breath though...

Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong

Jamie Chung and Bryan Greenberg

Written and directed by Emily Ting

www.alreadytomorrowfilm.com

Veering Off Script

Is Leung Chai-yan a star in the making? She already has the starlet looks...

The saga of Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying's daughter Leung Chai-yan continues, much to the delight of local media and others out to dig up dirt on him.

The latest is that the 23-year-old is set to star in a big screen romantic comedy that has been "tailor-made" for her".

However, she did not show up at the press conference last night to initiate her move from law studies to show business.

The film's director Wynn Lau Chun-fai claimed earlier that Leung would show up, but then later said she fell ill.

"She was already on the way, but suddenly felt very sick and could not walk at all," Lau said during the press conference.

Leung with her dad each having a Mister Softee ice cream

We wonder how this could be possible except for extreme stage fright, or eating something bad a few hours earlier...

Nevertheless, reports are that Leung signed a contract a month ago that would pay her a six-figure salary, and that filming would start in early March for the HK$10 million film scheduled to be released in June.

But Lau was coy about the film's title, only saying it was "confidential".

Leung is to play the role of a social worker, and her co-star is Don Li Yat-long, who will be a magazine reporter. While the two will be lovers in the movie, it has not been decided if kissing will be involved, and the story will not involve her father.

How can a movie be believable if the pair don't even kiss on screen?

Thirty-three-year-old Li seems to be completely in the dark about the film because he only found out yesterday his co-star would be Leung. "I won't feel embarrassed because of her father's identity," Li said.

Of course reporters asked the Chief Executive's Office for a comment on Leung's move to the big screen, but there was none.

We can only imagine there's lots of hang-wringing going on in the CEO's office, wondering how to contain this on-going reality drama that isn't going according to Leung Chun-ying's script...

Review: The Hundred-Foot Journey

A feel-good story about family, food, love and cultural clashes

Last night YTSL and I saw the preview for The Hundred-Foot Journey, a romance produced by Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey. Once you see her name attached to a project, you know it's going to be a feel-good movie.

It's about the Kadam family who used to run a successful restaurant in India, with son Hassan possessing culinary talent in his younger years. However, the family faced persecution, resulting in the destruction of their restaurant and the death of his mother.

Papa Kadam battles things out with Madame Mallory (left)

The father, daughter, her husband and two children along with Hassan flee to Europe and chance upon a small town in France. They are befriended by a young woman named Marguerite who introduces them to delicious local food.

Papa Kadam decides the family will set up shop there, buying an old farm house to establish their restaurant, Maison Mumbai.

But it just so happens that it's right across the street -- 100 feet -- from Madame Mallory's one Michelin-starred restaurant -- and Marguerite works as the sous chef there.

Academy Award-winning Helen Mirren plays Madame Mallory, an arrogant, sophisticated and sharp businesswoman who is determined to get her second star, and this instantly creates a rivalry between the two restaurants that at times is hilarious.

A relationship blooms between Marguerite and Hassan

Om Puri, a seasoned Indian actor is Papa Kadam, and he is a great match of wits for Mirren, while, Manish Dayal is a handsome Hassan, who gives the impression of a passionate chef, and Charlotte Le Bon is the amiable Marguerite.

Overall the film is a fun, and at times the dialogue is hilarious. It stretches at 122 minutes -- which drags on at the end and is actually predictable.

But if you love food and watching it being made, The Hundred-Foot Journey's for you. Just be sure to eat beforehand!