Senior Superintendent (SSP) Kong Man-keung and Senior Inspector (SIP) Ko Lok-lam, both from Commercial Crime Bureau (CCB), attended the 2nd Social Engineering Fraud Expert Group Meeting of INTERPOL in Lyon, France, on November 24 and 25.

Social Engineering Fraud is a prevalent crime with criminals manipulating their targets by exploiting inter-personal relationship and trust through telephone or email, resulting in voluntary reveal of confidential or financial information, or direct transfer of asset.

The meeting brought together 28 delegates from INTERPOL, EUROPOL and 14 countries and regions. Hong Kong was the only Asian region invited and attended the meeting to exchange intelligence on the latest trend of Social Engineering Fraud, and discuss the way forward for tackling this type of fraud together.

At the meeting, SSP Kong and SIP Ko presented the situations of "romance scam" and telephone deception in Hong Kong and the successful experience of the Force in reducing such frauds through investigation as well as education and publicity for the public.

They also took the opportunity to visit the Anti-Corruption and Financial Crimes (AFC) Sub-Directorate of INTERPOL and discussed with the Assistant Director of AFC about strengthening co-operation in combating cross-jurisdictional financial crime. The visit enhanced mutual understanding of the strategies of the Force and INTERPOL to combat financial crime, and paved the way to work closely to prevent and investigate the crime.