Con artists have bilked nearly HK$100 million (US$12.74 million) from Hong Kong jobseekers in the first four months of this year, according to police.

The amount of money scammers pocketed between January and April was 17 per cent more than the HK$85.3 million residents lost in 1,063 cases reported in the whole of 2021. There were 236 such cases involving total losses of HK$10.5 million in 2020.

On Thursday, two women and one man, aged between 25 and 39, separately called police to report being duped out of HK$758,000 in total in a “boosting sales” scam, a common type of online employment fraud.