Rise in fraud led uptick in January crime cases: Govt
The government said on Tuesday that nearly 7,700 crime cases were recorded in January, a 21 percent rise from a year ago.  The Undersecretary for Security, Michael Cheuk, said the increase was mainly due to more fraud, theft and blackmail cases involving nude chats being detected.  He said fraud rose by 15 percent to more than 3,200 cases, but the percentage was far lower than the 46 percent increase recorded in the whole of 2023. Cheuk added that since the authorities and banks introduced an alert system for suspicious transactions under the Faster Payment System last November, some 400,000 alerts have been sent out. He called on the public to be careful about online scams, which make up of the majority of fraud cases detected. "We also need to be careful about new methods, such as so-called deepfake clips, fraudsters pretending to be officials selling investment plans, or pretending to be your family and friends asking for money," Cheuk told reporters after attending a Fight Crime Committee meeting. The security undersecretary said the rise in theft was mainly to do with border reopening, and the pandemic making last year's base figure low. He also reiterated plans to install some 600 surveillance cameras in busy districts across Hong Kong to prevent crime, with the first batch of 15 to come in Mong Kok. Cheuk stressed that for the time being, the authorities have no plans to adopt facial recognition technology. "At this stage there won't be facial recognition yet. But as I said, we don't rule out that in future, we'll add suitable technology to help us prevent and fight crime at blackspots," he said. "For now, our CCTV cameras do not have tracing and facial recognition functions."