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-A graduate student named Xiaoxie received a phone call from a stranger who claimed to be a "police" informing her that she was suspected of money laundering.-The so-called police ordered her to transfer 2-3 million yuan to her "safe account" so they could investigate how and where she earned it to wipe her slate clean.-Xiaoxie first transferred 1.5 million yuan to the "safe account" but the "police" used various reasons to persuade her to transfer more money to that account, of which she transferred a further 2 million within a week.-She called the police who helped her track the account activities and recovered 2.73 million yuan in 6 months.▲The student's father took a group photo with the police as he collected the recovered 2.73 million yuan at the Changsha Railway Police station.When the Changsha Railway PSB reported the case on November 6th, it quickly became a top trending topic on social media with more than 60 million views and attracted upwards of 2,500 discussions about it on various social media platforms.Netizens were left with many questions such as "How can a graduate student be able to have so much money?", "If she was clean she would not have been intimidated by the scammers, no?", and "How can a graduate student fall to such an obvious scam?"Xiaoxie received a call on April 13th of this year from a stranger who claimed to be a police officer from the "Criminal Investigation Detachment of the Shanghai PSB". The man told her that a phone number registered under her name was used for money laundering and she needed to cooperate with the police investigation. The caller then invited her to a video call where she saw that he was wearing a police uniform, and he showed Xiaoxie his police badge and her "arrest warranty." He then told her that if she did not cooperate with the investigation, she would be arrested.As the person had all the information about Xiaoxie, such as her citizen ID number, her school ID number, the name of the school she is attending, her real name, etc. she believed that he was a real police officer and let down her guard.
At this point, the "police" told her that she needed to follow all the instructions carefully and not tell anyone about the case as it was still under investigation.Following the "police's" instructions, she downloaded an app through a link they sent her and registered an account, then she entered her "safe account's" bank account number and password. She was then asked to transfer 1.5 million yuan to her now compromised bank account.Xiaoxie borrowed from classmates and friends, as well as loan applications, and then transferred all the money to a "safe account", a total of 1.5 million yuan.However, the "police" told her that she needed to transfer a further 2 million yuan for the investigation to proceed and prove beyond doubt that she was not involved in money laundering.Xiaoxie's father said, "My daughter was scared and asked the scammers what she should do. The person who claimed to be a police officer said that in order to prove that she was not involved in money laundering, she had to transfer all the funds to one of her cards, the total must be two to three million yuan."Since she had transferred all the money she could get at the time, she took a leave from school and went to her hometown to raise more funds.She used various reasons to borrow money from her relatives, concealing from them the fact that she was using it to clear her name on a pending "money laundering investigation case".From April 13th to 19th, Xiaoxie transferred a total of 3,507,296 yuan 35 times to the so-called "safe account".
When she was on a train going back to school on April 19, she felt that something was not right and told her mother, who persuaded her to call the bank for consultation.Xiaoxie's father told reporters, "She was heading back to school from home when she suddenly told her mother that she felt she might have been scammed. Her mother asked her to call customer service at the bank to check the balance of her bank card."The customer service at the bank told her that a huge amount of money had been transferred in and out of the account, and the balance was now 0 yuan."
She realized that she was scammed and called the police.The police quickly tracked the phone number that was used to contact Xiaoxie and found that it was registered to Lin, who was later arrested in Shaoyang, Hunan province, on April 30th.From Lin, the police were able to track down other members of the fraud criminal gang led by Mr. Xie. The operation covered more than 20 cities in 9 provinces, arresting 52 suspects within six months from April to October. The investigation also revealed that Xie had started the criminal fraud gang in November 2022, in which members would buy personal information of citizens from various chat applications such as QQ.They would then use or help other fraudsters to use such information to register accounts on other chat apps to help conceal their real identities.The gang would also use various methods to scam money from unsuspecting victims and then launder it through different schemes to obtain clean money.The case is still under further investigation, however, police warned people to be aware of such commonly known fraud schemes as they are still active in society.
Reference: GMW, Changsha Railway PSB, CCTV13Add Wechat FLA5555 to ask to join the international students' wechat group.
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