A Taiwanese journalist based in Hong Kong fell for a credit card scam in Hong Kong. Shows the danger of letting down your guard.

Dear friends,

A criminal gang has stolen money from my bank account and I hope the same experience would not occur to any of you in future.

I received a call on my mobile phone at about 510pm this Monday from someone posing as a security officer from my bank, Standard Chartered.

He told me (in English since I don’t speak cantonese) someone found my bank card and returned it to the bank that afternoon. Till then, I had no idea my card was lost. It could be stolen from my wallet (wherein I put only one bank card, a business card and a few hundred dollars) probably over the weekend when I was on a crowded MTR train. The last time I used the card was a week ago and I took ferry and taxis for my daily commute.

Since I was in the middle of another meeting at the time and asked for his number to call back. He said he’ll call me back. After the meeting, I checked my wallet and found indeed my bank card was missing. At the point, this guy called me again. He said he needed to cancel my card but had to identify whether I was the owner. He said he would give me a password for me to withdraw cash from the bank’s branches before i received the new card on Friday and asked me to key in my pin no on the phone. I was off guard because he got my mobile no, and also because even though I am not a fan of EPS, I constantly saw people key in their pin on a machine to make purchases, which looks safe. I was also distracted by all the meetings and work.

After I punched my pin on the phone pad, I realized there was something wrong because this guy read out the number out and tried to verify the number whether it was right. And it was. I asked for his name and phone number at this point. I dialed that number right away after hanging up and that was a dead line.

I was panic and tried to find Standard Chartered’s service hotline on the computer in front of me. It took me a few minutes to get the number because the section “contact us” on the bank’s website goes to an email- form for customer to fill in. There was also on another page listing a phone number for new products but not a customer hotline. By the time I reached the bank, probably about 5-10 minutes later, and explained to the woman that I needed to cancel my card and verified all my personal information, there already were three transactions made on my bank card, two withdrawals of cash, each the limit of HK$10,000, but the third was near HK$50,000 made on an EPS purchase.

The next day, I found out from the bank, that even though there is daily limit for cash withdrawal from an ATM machine, there is not any limit whatsoever on EPS purchases and that I could not even reject the EPS service on a bank card. It is a compulsory part of the bank card
functions.

I also learnt from the police the next day that, other cases involving theft of bank cards found the criminal gang called you on your mobile and told you someone was using your card now and they needed you to key in the pin to identify whether you were the rightful owner, not the other person. I am not sure exactly how they found out my mobile number.

It could be from my old bz card (which was in my wallet at the time). But I think more likely, they can just buy the data from any low-level sale people working with a phone company and simply send their own people to work there. Other cases, according to that policeman, had some gang members stalking you after stealing your card and somehow, they managed to get hold of your number.

This is a lesson for me how not to trust the bank and their services and to be more careful about protecting my own financial data. Please be vigilant yourself. Hong Kong is no longer as safe as we think it is.