Mimi worked for a restaurant in a five-star hotel. Her boyfriend Harry patronised the restaurant frequently. One day Harry gave Mimi a small electronic device, half the size of a cigarette packet. He asked her to use the device, called a "skimmer", to capture credit card data when settling bills for customers.
Mimi refused at first, but Harry lied to her that it was not against the law, and offered her with a reward of HK$120 for every set of credit card data she captured with the device. Mimi finally agreed and over a period of about a month, she captured 42 sets of data. However, she was arrested by the ICAC after her activities became known to the hotel.
Investigations revealed that much of the data captured by Mimi had been used to manufacture counterfeit credit cards, which were then passed along to criminal syndicates in different countries. Several card-issuing banks together lost over two million dollars due to the scam.