The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has teamed up with banks and the police to launch a new public awareness campaign to combat rising scams that have defrauded the city’s residents to the tune of billions of dollars.
The HKMA on Wednesday released the first video in the series titled “Click the Links, Fall for Scams!”
The video features a “despicable banana”, a seemingly harmless character that reveals its true, greedy nature once its victims are hooked. The pronunciation of banana in Cantonese is the same as the word for falling into the traps of scammers.
Over the next three weeks, the regulator will release two more episodes on its social media platforms.
Last year, more than 44,000 scam cases were recorded, according to statistics released by the police department.
Although the number of scam cases last year increased at a slower pace at around 12 per cent, compared with more than 40 per cent in 2023, the amount involved reached a whopping HK$9.15 billion (US$1.2 billion).
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