18-year-old scam victim dies after heart attack
Print Edition
POLICE are investigating a telecom scam said to have led to the death of an 18-year-old girl who lost money meant for her college tuition.
Xu Yuyu, from Linyi, a city in east China’s Shandong Province, suffered a heart attack and died last Sunday, according to a report in the Yimeng Evening News. Before the incident she is said to have been in good health.
Her father, Xu Lianbin, said: “The scammers killed my daughter.”
Xu, who had enrolled at the Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, got a call last Friday telling her to go to an ATM to receive a student grant.
Xu believed the call was genuine as she had been told about the grant by the local education authority the previous day, the newspaper said.
Scammers told her to transfer her 9,900 yuan (US$1488)tuition fee to another account, with the promise that a 2,600 yuan grant and the tuition fee would be returned later.
However, after Xu made the transaction, the scammers’ phone was turned off.
Xu and her father went to the police the same evening, but she fainted on her way back home.
She was admitted to hospital where she died at 9:30pm last Sunday.
Xu Lianbin said the family had tried to reassure Xu that they would find the money for her tuition but she is said to have blamed herself for being scammed.
He said his biggest hope now was to have the scammers caught so they could not harm anyone else.
The newspaper said that many of Xu’s classmates had received similar calls, but disregarded them.
Xu was taken in because of the earlier, genuine call about her grant.
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