Hong Kong Executive Loses $764,000 in Bitcoin Scam for 3-Month Kitten

• A Hong Kong fashion executive was conned out of $764,000 in a kitten-selling scam, authorities said.
• The 58-year-old was asked to transfer bitcoin for delivery and insurance fees, SCMP reported.
• She sent fraudulent money via 40 cryptocurrency transactions over five months, the outlet wrote.

A Hong Kong fashion executive who thought she was adopting a kitten from Thailand was duped into giving fraudsters more than $764,000 in Bitcoin, local authorities said Wednesday.

The would-be cat adopter, a 58-year-old vice president of a fashion company, thought she had contacted someone who wanted to give away a three-month-old kitten, The South China Morning Post reported.

She connected with the unnamed person online in April and continued to communicate with them over WhatsApp, according to the outlet.

The manager was told that she could receive the kitten for free, but that she would have to pay transport and insurance fees via cryptocurrency, according to a case sent to Insider by the Hong Kong police.

She complied, opening a cryptocurrency account and sending the money to the accused fraudster’s e-wallet, authorities said.

The woman was then fed a long story about the cat having died during the shipping process. At the same time, another unnamed person posing as a foreign bank employee contacted her and said she would be compensated for the cat’s death with an insurance payout of about $150,000, police said, according to the briefing.

There was just one catch: The manager had to make another payment, this time as a guarantee or administration fee, according to police.

She followed the instructions, and when she realized the entire interaction was a scam, she had purchased $764,574 worth of cryptocurrency and sent it all to the scammer, authorities said.

The total amount was transferred over 40 Bitcoin transactions between July and November. It was only in January that management believed something was wrong and reported her case to the police, SCMP reported, citing an anonymous source familiar with the matter.

No one has been arrested in the case yet, the police say.

Crypto fraud has increased worldwide in recent years, with losses in 2021 totaling nearly 60 times the losses recorded in 2018, the Federal Trade Commission reported in June. Fraudsters made off with about $1 billion in crypto in 2021 alone, according to the FTC.

Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis reported a higher estimate for that year, saying $14 billion was taken by crypto fraudsters in 2021.

Pets are often in the mix as well. In April, authorities in New Zealand warned against scammers selling puppies using photos they found online, asking potential buyers to transfer more than $1,200 in crypto for purchase, transport, vaccination or insurance fees.

In 2018, Bitcoin scammers targeted owners of lost dogs in North Carolina, demanding ransom for the animals when they did not have the pets in their possession.