Chow Tai Fook Jewellery’s expansion into one of Hong Kong’s most recognizable gold and diamond chains was accompanied by a decades-long pattern of spectacular thefts and armed attacks. In 1966, diamonds valued at HK$1.23 million were stolen while being transported from South Africa. In 1974, another cache worth HK$250,000 was taken from the company’s staff at Manning House in Central. The violence escalated in the 1980s: the Kowloon City branch was robbed at gunpoint twice in 1980 and 1981, with a staff member and an uninvolved student injured during the second incident. In 1985, a gunfight erupted outside the same branch between Royal Hong Kong Police officers and the robbers; a police officer was wounded, and a man who later arrived at a hospital with a gunshot wound was suspected of being one of the fleeing criminals. The 1989 attack was more theatrical: armed thieves disguised themselves as ordinary customers entered the Causeway Bay Plaza branch and escaped with luxury watches reportedly worth HK$5 million.
The attacks continued into the 1990s. The Kowloon City shop was robbed again in 1991, while the China Building branch in Central was hit twice, in September and October of that year. In 1998, the Paterson Street branch in Causeway Bay was targeted by Kwai Ping-hung, a notorious Hong Kong criminal later described as the city’s most wanted man. The broader era also connected the chain’s security history to figures such as Yip Kai-foon and Kwai, who were arrested in 1996 and 2003 respectively. Although the supplied account describes violent jewellery robberies rather than counterfeit production or an organized fake-goods cartel, the incidents reveal the criminal vulnerability of Hong Kong’s high-value luxury retail trade: diamonds and watches moved through international supply chains, while storefronts became targets for armed crews capable of impersonation, ambushes, and gun battles. The arrests of major suspects coincided with a sharp decline in armed attacks against the company in later years.
