So the new iPhone dropped, and while everyone was queuing outside the Causeway Bay store, more than 700 people found out their credit cards had already bought one. Not stolen phones off a shelf. Fake orders, placed online, using their card numbers, over the weekend. Police are now on it, and banks say they're reversing the dodgy charges. Small comfort if you're the one refreshing your banking app at midnight wondering why there's an iPhone 18 Pro Max heading to an address you've never heard of.

Here's the part that should annoy you more than it probably does. Every year Apple launches a new phone, every year the scramble to be first gets worse, and every year the fraud rides in right behind it. Scammers don't need your physical card. They just need the number, and enough merchants who don't check hard enough before shipping a HK$10,000 phone to a stranger. The bank will sort your refund eventually. Nobody's sorting the fact that this happens like clockwork every September, right on schedule with the launch event.