Stranger's Phone Call Swipes Away Millions, Victim Forced to "Pay Back" Scammers

Even though everything has passed by more than a month, when 50-something Ms. Mei (pseudonym) thinks back on her experience with being scammed, she can still clearly hear the anxiety in her voice.

According to Ms. Mei's account, what happened was exactly the "million-dollar protection" scam that has been widely spread online. The difference is that this time, the scammer was even greedier and not only stole her tens of thousands of yuan in savings but also induced her to borrow 50,000 yuan online loan, which was then taken away along with it.

"This means after losing tens of thousands of yuan in savings, I have no choice but to 'pay back' the scammers."

It all started on November 28th when a stranger's phone call caught Ms. Mei off guard. She remembers this date clearly, and the caller ID was a local mobile number.

According to Ms. Mei's description, the person on the other end of the line claimed to be a WeChat "million-dollar protection" employee who could precisely report her name and identity card number, making her believe it was true.

The scammer told Ms. Mei that her "million-dollar protection" free period was about to expire and required her to choose whether to renew or not. Since she didn't understand the business of "million-dollar protection," when she heard that if she didn't renew, she would be charged high fees, she got anxious and agreed to renew immediately.

The scammer said that if Ms. Mei wanted to cancel her subscription, she needed to close down all related bank cards to prevent future automatic deductions.

Because Ms. Mei didn't understand phone operations well, she followed the scammer's instructions and downloaded ZOOM software, entered a designated room to share screens, without realizing that she was completely under the scammer's surveillance at this point.

Firstly, the scammer pretended to close down related bank cards by telling Ms. Mei to shut off the UnionPay auto-deduct feature, and then required her to input a code in the WeChat public chat window that contained her bank card number and password.

Subsequently, the scammer claimed that Ms. Mei's input of incorrect passwords caused her bank account to be frozen, and asked her to send a verification code "101234" to the scammer's mobile phone to unfreeze it.

In reality, Ms. Mei later discovered that "101234" was actually the transfer amount of over 10 million yuan. "I'm 50 years old, and I don't know how to transfer money via my mobile phone!" Ms. Mei said. She made three transfers, totaling tens of thousands of yuan, which were all taken away by the scammer.

The police were helpless; when Ms. Mei called them, they told her that it was difficult to recover the lost funds due to their sophistication and professional nature.

Ms. Mei's police report

Warning: Don't fall for stranger calls and information