Eight suspects have been detained in a joint operation by the Hong Kong Police Force and Macao’s Judiciary Police over their alleged roles in a suspected investment fraud linked to “Fun Coffee”, which claims to be a Vietnam-based enterprise, Hong Kong authorities disclosed on Tuesday.
The ongoing investigation has since July registered 225 claims, with aggregate projected losses of HK$94 million ($12 million).
At a media briefing, Chief Inspector Lo Yuen-shan of the Hong Kong Police Force’s commercial crime bureau reported that the force has arrested one man and five women — aged 51 to 64 — on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud in a joint Hong Kong-Macao police operation from Saturday to Monday in connection with the “Fun Coffee” investment case.
Meanwhile, the Judiciary Police in Macao have taken two women into custody on aggravated fraud charges and are probing nine related cases with total losses estimated at MOP$3.6 million ($445,200).
The victims, whose ages range from 32 to 83 and include retirees, reported per-person losses ranging between HK$3,000 and around HK$9.6 million, Lo said.
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Police in Hong Kong found that the company’s business premises in Kowloon Bay, Tsim Sha Tsui and other locations across the city had ceased operations and seized about HK$147,000 in cash, 16 bank cards and six mobile phones.
Having entered the Hong Kong market in late 2025, “Fun Coffee” wooed people to invest in their coffee-based ventures using cryptocurrency, claiming to have developed sophisticated brewing machinery, optimized coffee gene technology, and intelligent irrigation and fertilization systems. The company told investors that the higher the investment amount and the longer the period of depositing funds, the higher the relative return would be.
Three investment packages — dubbed “start-up”, “growth” and “voyage” — then touted 197 percent to 278 percent annual returns, police said.
The operation also dangled incentives — kickbacks for recruiting close contacts and rewards for regular log-ins — that effectively locked victims into repeat investments.
The police started hearing from concerned residents in July, and later investigations revealed that “Fun Coffee” was a fraud that generated no actual profits but instead paid earlier investors with money collected from newer ones.
The scheme collapsed in late July, the same month in which the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong (SFC) formally flagged the “Fun Coffee GCM Project” as a suspicious investment product.
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“Some investors were lured by the high returns, while others followed the lead of friends who had apparently made money,” Lo said. “But what we found was that many of them understood very little about the company, or even what their money was being used for.”
The mobile platform of “Fun Coffee” went dark on July 20, leaving investors unable to withdraw their funds and customer service unresponsive. “Only then did many victims realize they had been scammed,” said the police.
The arrests were made against a backdrop of rising concern over virtual-asset fraud in Hong Kong, which has in recent years posed an increasingly serious threat to residents’ financial wellbeing.
The Hong Kong Police Force’s review for 2025 showed that one third of the city’s 5,135 online investment fraud cases — a 30.7 percent year-on-year increase — involved virtual assets such as cryptocurrency.
In total, online investment scams generated a disproportionate HK$3.58 billion in losses, up 58.4 percent and the highest among all fraud types, according to police.
In a separate online article on fraudulent virtual asset trading platforms, the Investor and Financial Education Council — an independent public organization and a subsidiary of the SFC — cautioned the public against any investment that offers both high returns and low risk.
“Investments promising guaranteed high returns at low risks simply do not exist. The higher the potential returns, the higher the risks. Always do your own research before investing,” it read. “What’s more, stay alert and beware of scams.”
The council advised residents to consult the SFC’s “List of Suspicious Virtual Asset Trading Platforms” and run checks through the police’s one-stop scam search engine “Scameter” tool before investing.
Anyone who suspects they have been defrauded, or who has enquiries about scam cases, should contact the Hong Kong Police Force’s Anti-Deception Coordination Centre, the council added.
Contact the writer at wanqing@chinadailyhk.com
