Regina Ip gets back US$65,000 stolen in email scam
Missing money found in Singapore account after email scam led to bogus bank instruction
PUBLISHED : Saturday, 07 February, 2015, 2:27am
UPDATED : Saturday, 07 February, 2015, 2:34am
Clifford Lo and Joyce Ng
Regina Ip confirmed that her bank told her yesterday that the missing sum had been deposited back into her account. Photo: K. Y. Cheng
The HK$500,000 stolen from former security minister Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee following an email scam has been returned to her after the money was traced to a Singapore bank account, according to police sources.
The rogue instructions to transfer US$65,000 (HK$504,000) from Ip's account included a recipient account number in Singapore, where the money was found, according to one source.
Ip only discovered the theft on Tuesday and the source said the transfer had been made last week, adding that it was "rare" for hackers to delay withdrawing funds stolen in this way.
"We are alerting our counterparts in Singapore through our Liaison Bureau that the account there may be involved in money laundering or other illegal activities," the source said.
Ip, who sits on the Executive Council and the Legislative Council and is chairwoman of the New People's Party, confirmed that her bank told her yesterday that the missing sum had been deposited back into her account.
She added that she was "very pleased" with the outcome. However, she said her bank may have been negligent in failing to verify the payment instruction - while it had tried to contact her, she had been tied up in meetings.
"They made a lot of calls [to me]. The amount involved is not big. They thought there was an urgent need and the money was wired out," Ip said.
Ip believes her email account was hacked after she opened an attachment on a bogus email purportedly from MTR Corporation chairman Dr Raymond Chien Kuo-fung. The email read: "Regina, I need help. Urgent. Please open the attachment."
Chien sent an email hours later warning that his account had been hacked and advising her to change her password, said Ip. But, again, her busy schedule meant she forgot.
She only found out she had been robbed when her bank alerted her on Tuesday that another transfer had been requested. Ip, who says the hackers must have found a previous instruction to her bank among her emails, immediately alerted police.
She said: "I will be changing my computer server and checking each computer to see if it is infected with a bug."
Police figures show HK$1 billion was stolen via unauthorised access to computers in the city last year, up 31 per cent on 2013.
