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Kowloon East (KE) Region has recently launched “Project ALLIANCE” to partner with various sectors in the community to jointly combat deception and enhance the anti-scam awareness of the public.
In addition to conducting seminars on prevalent deception trends for the staff of banks and money service operators (MSOs), officers of the Regional Crime Prevention Office of Kowloon East (RCPO KE) have also provided deception indicator cards to the staff to assist them in identifying potential deception victims. RCPO KE officers also enlisted the help of the staff in intercepting deception attempts and encouraged them to contact the Anti-Deception Coordination Centre or RCPO KE for timely intervention.
Having analysed the victim profile of various deception cases, RCPO KE officers have engaged non-governmental organisations (NGOs) serving the elderly and Mainland student groups to deliver seminars and seek their help in further disseminating anti-deception messages to their clients or members. In order to combat romance scams, RCPO KE officers have also engaged various women organisations to organise publicity events. Moreover, RCPO KE has also broadcast anti-deception videos at shopping malls, medical centres, industrial and commercial buildings and published anti-scam messages in free local newspapers and stakeholders’ internal publications.
In the first phase of “Project ALLIANCE”, RCPO KE has collaborated with 98 banks, 90 MSOs, 12 NGOs and five commercial and education organisations. The efforts have resulted in the interception of payment to fraudsters in nine deception cases by three banks and six MSOs in the past few months. In one telephone deception case, the bank staff even assisted the Police to apprehend a culprit.
