Eleven arrested over alleged money laundering

Police on Friday said they had arrested 11 people suspected of being part of a gang that allegedly laundered HK$220 million over the past two years.

Officers said they arrested the eight men and three women, aged between 23 and 57, during an operation on Wednesday and Thursday.

They include the owner of a money transfer company in San Po Kong, three members of staff, and seven people said to have been recruited to open stooge bank accounts, officers said.

Police said they seized a large number of mobile phones, computers, security devices for online banking, and more than 100 cheque books at the San Po Kong office.

Officers said HK$61 million of the crime proceeds had been stolen from 22 people caught up in scams.

Chief inspector Ngan Hoi-ian from the police’s commercial crime bureau said the youngest known victim of the scams was a 20-year-old mainland student enrolled at a local university.

Ngan said the student was cheated out of HK$360,000 in a telephone scam, after he entered his bank account details on a website under the instruction of a bogus mainland official who told him he was suspected of money laundering.

Police said the force received 735 reports of telephone scams between January and September this year, and the victims in more than 90 of those cases were university students from the mainland.