The Force commends outstanding bank staff for helping police combat scams

The Bank Staff Recognition Ceremony organized by the Hong Kong Police Force was held on August 30. The award recognizes the efforts of banks and frontline bank staff in assisting the Police in combating deception cases.

The ceremony was officiated by the Commissioner of Police, Siu Chak-yee. Executive Director of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Carmen Chu; and representative of the Hong Kong Association of Banks, Boey Wong were also invited as officiating guests to present the awards.

Addressing the ceremony, Siu said there had been an alarming rise in deception cases. In 2016, the number of deception cases was around 10 percent of the overall crime cases, but now it has jumped to one in every three cases. He pointed out that fraudsters had employed different defrauding tricks to commit crimes with the use of phones and the Internet, which had posed considerable challenges to crime prevention. Therefore, the Police work in close collaboration with the banking sector in combating deception cases.

Siu added that the Anti-Deception Coordination Centre (ADCC) had successfully prevented 1,760 scam cases from happening with joint efforts from the Police and the banking sector since its establishment in July 2017. Among them, more than 460 cases were detected by bank staff resulting in the arrests of 571 fraudsters and intercepting over HK$10.7 billion. He praised the frontline bank staff for their vigilance and professionalism, successfully preventing sca from happening.

He said he hoped the bank sector would deepen the collaboration with the banking sector, in particular regarding the "24/7" Stop-Payment Mechanism, thereby intercepting payments to fraudsters in a round-the-clock manner. The Police also hoped the sector could actively adopt a multi-pronged approach to combat deception cases by using RegTech in crime detection and prevention and traditional educational promotion.

In addition to individual awards, eight cooperate awards were established, including The Most Active Participation Award (Champion, 1st runner-up, and 2nd runner-up), Effective Application of Regtech, Expert Assistance on the Prosecution against Loco London Gold Sca, Active Participation in Scam Prevention Training, Extensive Display of Anti-Scam Publicity Materials and High Turnout of Scam Response Tea, in recognition of the banks’ contributions in prevention and inspection of deception cases, as well as interception and reporting. (The awardees are listed in the Annex).

In the past year and a half, a total of 192 frontline bank staff had assisted the Police in identifying 290 deception cases and reported them to the ADCC, thus preventing the public from falling into sca. Meanwhile, a bank rewarded with "Effective Application of Regtech" had successfully detected at least 26 ongoing deception cases by application of RegTech, during which its staff conducted enquiries to victim and convinced them to report the cases, allowing the Police to activate the Stop-Payment Mechanism and assist the victim to recover their losses.

In the first half of 2022, a total of 12,326 deception cases was recorded, registering a significant increase of 42 percent compared with that of the same period of 2021, with pecuniary loss exceeding HK$2.1 billion.