JPEX snares 1,641 investors with HK$1.2 billion of funds in Hong Kong’s largest fraud case in history
- Police received complaints from 1,641 investors as of Monday evening, involving nearly HK$1.2 billion in assets
- Eight people have been arrested in connection with the investigations into alleged fraud by JPEX
The financial toll in Hong Kong’s cryptocurrency scandal has risen to HK$1.2 billion (US$154 million) involving more than 1,600 investors, making it the single largest financial fraud case in the city’s history and exposing risks faced by local retail investors amid a government push to transform the global financial centre into a virtual asset hub.
Police received complaints from 1,641 investors as of 10.30pm on Monday, involving HK$1.19 billion in assets, including HK$40 million from the biggest victim, the Hong Kong commercial crime bureau’s acting chief inspector Mak Wai-kwong said at a joint press conference with the city’s securities watchdog agency on Tuesday.
Police arrested eight people in connection with investigations into alleged fraud at JPEX, Mak said. Bank accounts with HK$15 million were frozen, and three properties valued at HK$44 million were seized, he said.
The amount of losses and the number of victims were “astonishing”, and the case involved mostly “inexperienced” cryptocurrency investors who had no understanding of the products they were investing in, the bureau’s senior superintendent Kung Hing-fun said. Investors fell for JPEX’s promises of high yields even though the stories were “too good to be true”, she said.
