First published: 09th January 2015
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has warned that the webpage "http://hsplbk.com/bank.hangseng.com/1/2/personal/private-banking/private-banking.html" is a fraudulent copy of the official website of Hang Seng Bank, Limited (HSB). The page is unavailable at the time of writing and the Police are investigating.
Please contact HSB at 2822 0228 and any local Police Station or the Commercial Crime Bureau of the Hong Kong Police Force at 2860 5012 if you have used the site.
The domain hsplbk.com was registered in March 2014 and the site was hosted by UK company Fasthosts Internet Ltd. According to Google, the domain hosted at least seven other fake HSB pages, and no trace of innocent pages were found in Google or the Internet Archive. This suggests that the criminals deviated from common criminal practice of hosting their fraudulent pages on compromised legitimate websites, and choose to register the domain legally solely for this fake HSB site. If that is the case, the site might have been operating undetected for ten months.