A university student has lost nearly HK$190,000 after falling victim to a new variant of online job scams that use fluent English and professional recruitment tactics to appear legitimate. Throughout the process, the scammers communicated entirely in fluent English, providing detailed explanations about the company’s background, operations and job duties to build trust. The student was invited to attend a 40-minute “training session” and was then given access to a purported company website and internal account. In a separate incident, a job seeker narrowly avoided a scam after being asked to hand over HK$5,000 to a “client” following a training session for a promoter role. Police recorded 4,095 cases of online job scams in 2025, with the vast majority involving task-based fraud schemes requiring upfront payments.

Source: The Standard April 01, 2026 17:47 UTC