5 ensnared in scams set up via WeChat
Print Edition
FIVE people lost up to hundreds of thousands yuan to alleged scammers in two recent cases.
In suburban Shanghai’s Jiading District, a man surnamed Xu was arrested for a WeChat scam involving 1.5 million yuan (US$220,000), police said yesterday.
In Qingpu District, a man surnamed Hong was arrested for defrauding two people of 6,000 yuan, again via WeChat, police said.
In each case, police said those defrauded had forgotten the golden rule — ensure you know the true identity of your WeChat “friend.”
Xu, who works as a driver for a cargo company, allegedly created a fake account in which he claimed to be a manager of the company to convince a couple that they could get under-the-table deals from the company.
The couple was persuaded to invest money together with a friend to buy two trucks. The victims said they trusted Xu so much that they didn’t even think of signing a contract with him.
Xu told police he had spent the scam profits on entertainment, a car, and the construction of a house back in his hometown.
In the other alleged scam, one of Hong’s victims, a woman surnamed Wang, contacted Hong on WeChat in October for business cooperation, having known him previously when he was working for ganji.com, a Chinese classified advertisements website.
Without telling her that he no longer worked there, Hong offered her a deal for publishing a large amount of real estate property information on the website and charged her and a friend via WeChat. Wang called the police when she found out that she was defrauded by Hong and was told by his former employer that he had resigned in July.
Hong allegedly owned up and said that he was short of money due to an addiction to gambling.
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