Why are more Hong Kong young offenders getting involved in money laundering, fraud cases? Promise of quick cash a strong lure, experts say
- Top offence of young offenders shifted over the past two years from theft to criminal damage to deception
- Children as young as 13 have been targeted on social media for ‘debt collection jobs’ that lead to crime
But that easy-going demeanour conceals the 16-year-old’s anxiety about a looming date in court, when he will be sentenced for several extortion offences.
He was 13 when a group of young men approached him and a friend at a billiards club, offering car rides, fancy meals and, eventually, membership of a triad group.
Over a year-long period, he was involved in multiple violent acts ranging from assault to extortion and illegal detention of debtors. The victims owed money to his boss or drug dealers.
His reward for an assignment could reach five figures, with HK$1,000 (US$128) guaranteed each time.
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Chan, who had a poor relationship with his family at the time, recalled: “I wanted to rely on myself, to do something special.”
Police officers told him to expect seven to nine years in jail for his crimes.
“I thought I did something great back then, but if I faced my old self in the mirror now, I would say he only did stupid things,” Chan said.
Youngsters recruited to ‘collect money’
Commissioner of Police Raymond Siu Chak-yee warned last month that juvenile crime was rising, with 1,529 young offenders arrested in the first half of the year, 22.8 per cent more than in the same period of 2022.
Among them, 113 were arrested for money-laundering offences, 26 more than over the whole of last year. The number arrested for fraud more than doubled from 102 in the first half of 2022 to 217 over the same period this year.
Over the past decade, however, the number of young offenders aged between 10 and 20 fell from 5,397 in 2013 to 2,774 last year.
The decline was consistent over the decade except in 2019, when 4,268 were arrested, mostly for public order violations related to the social unrest that year.
In Hong Kong, only those above 10 years old are held accountable for crime, and offenders below 16 are handled by the Juvenile Court.
The top offence of young offenders shifted from theft to criminal damage in 2021 and deception last year. The latter covers fraud and embezzlement.
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Senior Superintendent Leung Chung-man from the police public relations wing said youth crime offences mirrored the broader trend in Hong Kong, where fraud syndicates controlled by overseas criminals tricked locals into giving up their savings.
Some victims do not transfer funds online, but hand over cash to the fraudsters’ runners.
“That’s when syndicates need locals to collect the scammed proceeds,” Leung said. “Very often, they recruit youths and disguise the job as a mission to simply collect money.”
Youngsters lured by the promise of easy money from these “debt collection” assignments could end up facing criminal damage or deception charges.
The maximum penalty for criminal damage is 10 years’ jail and for fraud, 14 years.
Leung said the criminals often misled their young recruits into believing that they would not get into serious trouble if caught, and many arrested youths thought they would be let off with just a superintendent’s caution, a formal warning.
That was not true, he added, as juvenile criminals had been detained or sent to training centres, and were left with criminal records.
For example, a 16-year-old boy arrested in 2021 for illegal debt collection after splashing red paint outside a creditor’s home was sent by the court to a detention centre for male offenders aged 14 to 24, to perform hard labour for between one month and six months.
Social worker Wandy Wan Kit-yin, who has worked with young offenders in East Kowloon for 25 years, said she had noticed more being recruited to splash red paint at debtors’ homes or extort from them over the past two years.
Children as young as 13 had fallen prey to criminal recruitment on social media, where debt collection jobs were advertised as lucrative temporary gigs. Some were drawn in by peers who had received rewards from such jobs.
“If you asked them if they knew this could be illegal, I think they were aware, or at least could guess,” said Wan, who leads a support scheme for arrested youths at the non-profit Hong Kong Playground Association.
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She added that some, especially younger offenders, fooled themselves into believing they were “merely collecting money” instead of intimidating or extorting from their victims.
Among the young offenders caught in the first half of this year, 217 were arrested for deception, the top crime, and 104 for criminal damage. For the two top crimes, 59 were aged 10 to 15 and 262 were 16 to 20.
Police officer Leung warned that money-laundering offences were on the rise, with youngsters sharing their bank account details with acquaintances or strangers without checking how they would be used.
When the bank accounts were later found to be connected to scams or money laundering activities, the young account holders could end up arrested and facing punishment.
Police have turned to schools and parents to raise awareness, distributing anti-crime booklets to schools and youth service centres to highlight recent crime trends, common traps for youngsters and examples of operations by the force and the sentences meted by the courts.
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Detained for ‘delivering documents’
Chan Yu*, 18, spent more than four months in a detention centre last year after taking on a job offered by an older youth he met at a public basketball court.
In March last year, he agreed to help the jobless 22-year-old, who promised him HK$2,000 for delivering “loan documents”.
“The task was just delivering some documents to be signed,” he recalled. “That sounded easy, so I didn’t think much about it.”
The friend accompanied him on the first delivery, after which Chan operated on his own, delivering photocopied documents to an alleged former business partner of his friend.
Before he could be paid, however, a group of officers surrounded him in a bank and took him to a police station, warning him along the way that he could be jailed for three years for conspiracy to defraud.
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Chan said he was grilled about his friend’s background and business ties, but he was clueless and could not answer the questions.
He was detained for four months before he was released.
Describing that brush with the law as “surreal”, Chan said he did not understand what was happening and even wondered if his arrest was a hoax.
He was sentenced to four months and two weeks in detention for conspiracy to defraud.
He never saw his friend again, he said.
“Their low levels of skill, motivation and education make it hard for them to succeed in conventional paths. Then they think risks associated with making quick money will be worth it,” he said.
Drawn by scam recruitment advertisements online or the success stories of their peers, some end up committing their first criminal act before being sucked in.
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“Organised criminal groups want to give hope and satisfaction to their followers,” he said. “Such satisfaction doesn’t only come from money, but also having followers and getting promotions that help to rationalise their lawbreaking behaviour,” Chui said.
He urged the government to ramp up justice education across primary and secondary schools to teach students about the city’s legal system and how the courts worked.
But to tackle the crux of delinquency, he said, Hong Kong’s youth needed to develop more empathy and have hope for their future.
“We need moral education that isn’t just about rules and principles, but emotions to let them understand the impact of their actions,” Chui said. “If they have skills and hope, change will come naturally.”
*Not his real name
