Crime in Hong Kong

Chen Xiaobai, a graphic designer from Changsha city in southern China’s Hunan province, has been running a WeChat messaging group since the beginning of February called The Victims of Online Masks Fraud. The group has attracted about 170 members, all of whom had been cheated out of money while trying to buy face masks online to protect themselves or other people from the spread of the novel coronavirus. Online fraud has a long history, but fears about the coronavirus outbreak and a shortage of masks have brought swindlers a fresh pool of potential victims among China’s 800 million internet users. With the demand for masks far exceeding the supply many have no choice but to turn to private c

Detectives in Hong Kong investigating the seizure of two powerful home-made bombs at a school campus believe they were intended for an attack on police at a democracy march that happened at the weekend, sources said on Tuesday. The apparent bomb plot, revealed amid long-running anti-government unrest, prompted a police union to describe the city’s security situation as at its “most alarming” in decades, even worse than during a wave of armed robberies in the 1990s. Force insiders believed the would-be bombers were forced to abandon the attack planned for Sunday after a group of their associates were arrested in a police swoop that morning, hours before the march – which attracted hundreds of

A Shanghai man who flew to Hong Kong to pursue a cyber-romance was jailed for 10 months on Tuesday after his supposedly 22-year-old girlfriend turned out to be 12. Interior designer Lu Wei, 28, came to the city last year to meet the girl, whom he had met playing games online, a Hong Kong court heard. Only after things had turned intimate did he learn that the girl, who had told him she was 22, was actually a decade younger. The District Court heard he decided to stay in the city and accept his punishment, despite having already bought a ticket home. He was sentenced on Tuesday after pleading guilty earlier to two counts of unlawful sex with a girl under 13, which carries a maximum sentence o

A Hong Kong court on Thursday quashed a banker’s indecent assault conviction after finding his defense of sexsomnia, also known as sleep sex, had not been adequately considered at trial. Sexsomnia, as explained by deputy High Court judge Sham Siu-man, is a medical condition that occurs when a person engages in sexual acts while asleep. “As it happens while sleeping, something akin to sleepwalking, the sufferer would be unconscious of what he is doing at the time and have no memory of it after waking up,” Sham said. “It is a medical condition, which if accepted may in law amount to [a] defense.” At issue was whether Boris Anthony Finan, a 28-year-old financial planning manager, could use the

When her husband had an affair, she blamed herself and pledged to change.  She never got the chance.  A diary kept by the woman who was murdered by a Hong Kong professor using a gas-filled yoga ball has shed light on the Malaysian couple’s troubled marriage. Wong Siew Fing expressed deep regret at the demise of her relationship with Khaw Kim Sun in a diary obtained by the South China Morning Post. “I didn’t listen when my husband tried to tell me he needed me,” she wrote in a diary entry from 2013. Concerning her children, she wrote that she had failed to care for them or act as a role model to give them “the best in life.” Two years on from that entry, her husband murdered Wong and one of

A 66-year-old businesswoman in Hong Kong has set a new record in the city, for the greatest sum of money lost in an online love scam: $23 million. According to police, the victim, a wealthy widow who runs a real estate investment company, transferred the money over four years to a man posing as an engineer from Britain. The money she lost was nearly seven times the previous record of $3.3 million, which was swindled out of a public housing tenant over a period of 18 months. The latest case came to light after the woman had a conversation with her family and realized she was being duped. She contacted police last month. A con artist posing as a British engineer befriended her on an online pla

A Malaysian professor has been put on trial in Hong Kong for allegedly killing his wife and daughter with a yoga ball filled with carbon monoxide.  Anesthetist Khaw Kim-sun, 53, put the exercise ball filled with the toxic gas in the trunk of his wife's yellow Mini Cooper in May 2015, prosecutors alleged at the High Court this week.  The gas then leaked into the car, killing his 47-year-old wife Wong Siew-fung and 16-year-old daughter Khaw Li-ling, the prosecutors said.  The professor has pleaded not guilty to the two counts of murder.  Khaw was an associate professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He was having an affair with a student at the time of the alleged murder, according t

Forget cigarette boats or rum-runners: all the best smuggling these days is done by drones. Authorities announced last Thursday that they have smashed a gang who used a system of drones, giant motorized wheels and cables to smuggle more than $79 million worth of mobile phones between Hong Kong and mainland China. Officials arrested 26 people in Shenzhen and three in Hong Kong, seizing two drones, two wheels and nearly 5,000 mobile phones. The gang, who authorities said had been operating for the past six months, used the drones to fly two 100-metre cables from two high-rise buildings in the border city of Shenzhen, to the roof of a village house in Hong Kong. The metropolis of Shenzhen sits

Hong Kong’s party crowd may have to go without this weekend. The city's customs officers just announced the seizure of some 66 pounds of cocaine – or about 30,000 one-gram bags – with an estimated street value of $4.1 million.  The majority of the seized drugs were hidden inside noodle-making equipment imported from Brazil, via China. Claiming to have busted an international drug syndicate, customs described the smuggling method as “extremely sophisticated.” The drug bust isn’t surprising, if you consider Hong Kong's past. The city has a rich history right at the center of the Asian drug trade. Hong Kong was originally ceded to the British in 1842 after the first Opium War, which was waged a