In the past two days, a news on social media that is looking for Chinese dancer Zhang Lin of the Hamburg Ballet in Germany has touched people's hearts.
The missing person information said that Zhang Lin, a Chinese actor who graduated from Beijing Dance and is now a balllet with the Hamburg Ballet in Germany, has been missing since rehearsal last Friday.
Zhang Lin is 21 years old and 170 tall. She was finally seen rehearsing in a dance troupe, and her roommates didn't see her come home. It wasn't until I didn't come to work this week that I was found missing by the group.
It is reported that the Hamburg Ballet has called the police, and her family is also applying for emergency visas.
For information, please contact the Hamburg police directly
At present, many people have reprinted this missing person information on Sina Weibo and Xiaohongshu. Some netizens said: The situation is true, and her work and life in Hamburg are very normal, she has played a new drama and a new role, and it is a terrible situation to suddenly lose contact for no reason, please spread!
Some netizens on social media said that they had received the blackmail video, but did not say whether it was Zhang Lin's relatives or friends who received the video.
Some suspected informed netizens said that Zhang Lin graduated from Beiwu High School, a dark horse of that high school graduate, and won the fourth place in Lausanne in 2020 with the touching Giselle.
After more than a year of studying at the Hamburg Ballet School Xi in Germany, he was handpicked by Grandpa No.
It is reported that Zhang Lin has now become an official actor of the Hamburg Ballet in Germany, and on December 8 last year, she played an important role in the ballet "Jane Eyre" for the first time.
Some netizens posted photos of her previous performances, wearing a gauze skirt and dancing smartly, which is indeed very amazing.
Many netizens expressed while forwarding the news: I hope it is just a false alarm, and everything is safe
It is reported that there is no police update for the time being, and someone on Xiaohongshu went to the vicinity of the last place where Zhang Lin was witnessed, and many missing person notices have been posted there.
At the end of the year and the beginning of the year, such news is really worrying, and I hope that this girl will be able to return safely soon.
He was virtually kidnapped in the United States
The parents were found after paying a ransom of 560,000
Recently, there have been cases of kidnapping related to overseas Chinese. Before Christmas last year, the news of the disappearance of Chinese student Kai Zhuang attracted the attention of the whole network.
At the last moment of 2023, he finally appeared safely. His parents and those who care about him in China can finally breathe a sigh of relief!
KSL TV quoted police in Riverdale, Utah, as saying that 17-year-old Zhuang Kai was found in a tent in the mountains near Brigham City on a cold night on December 31, "he was still alive, but very cold and scared."
Police said Zhuang Kai was a victim of a "virtual kidnapping on the Internet".
"Virtual kidnapping" differs from traditional forms of kidnapping in that criminal gangs do not need to physically contact the victim and carry out the kidnapping. They usually manipulate the victim through "verbal tricks" to make the victim obey their instructions and cooperate with the action.
Riverdale Police Chief Casey Warren said in a statement that Mr. Zhuang had been manipulated and controlled by "cyber virtual kidnappers" who had convinced him that his family members far away in China were being threatened and manipulated him into leaving his host home.
After that, Zhuang Kai's parents received a ransom letter from the kidnappers and a "creepy" photo. For the safety of their children, the anxious parents have paid a ransom of US$80,000 (more than 560,000 yuan) to the kidnappers.
Since receiving the report, Riverdale police have been working closely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, and the Chinese side.
The police investigation found that Zhuang Kai had been lured to the supermarket several times in recent times to buy camping supplies.
Since then, his phone and bank card records have also been traced.
Police also found that Mr. Zhuang had interacted with law enforcement in Provo, Utah, on Dec. 20, eight days before his disappearance, while he was carrying camping gear.
The police concluded that Zhuang Kai was likely hiding in the mountains near Brigham City in accordance with the intention of the virtual kidnappers, and deliberately lost contact with the outside world.
On December 30, the police took urgent action and requested the participation of drone search and rescue teams to find the campsite where Zhuang Kai might be hiding in case he encountered danger in cold conditions.
After a hard battle, Inspector Engelstrom finally found Zhuang Kai's tent in a wooded area on the hillside.
When he was found, Zhuang Kai was not lightly frozen, but fortunately, his vital signs were normal, and the search and rescue personnel breathed a sigh of relief.
According to KSL, after the police found Zhuang Kai, they quickly let him eat a hot burger, after which he spoke with his family and was taken to the Riverdale Police Department.
The fake student was kidnapped, and he gave money if he didn't want to die
In fact, when the news of Zhuang Kai's disappearance first appeared, many netizens thought that it might be a scam of online virtual kidnapping.
After all, in the overseas Chinese student circle, there have been many such cases.
In the first eight months of 2020 alone, in Sydney, Australia, eight parents of Chinese students paid 3.2 million Australian dollars (about 16 million yuan) for similar kidnapping cases.
Previously, the Australian police had said that these virtual kidnapping cases have certain routines:
Usually, international students will first receive a phone call like this: "This is the Chinese embassy or consulate abroad, and now I suspect you of criminal acts..."
Scammers often impersonate Chinese embassy or consulate staff, and sometimes even claim to be Chinese police officers, to obtain details of international students and their families.
The scary thing is that fraudsters use technical means to disguise the outbound phone number as the phone number on duty of the Chinese consulate, which is more deceptive.
After the phone call was made, the scammers claimed that the victims themselves or their parents were involved in a crime, such as their credit cards in China involving international financial fraud and money laundering, and asked for their cooperation in the investigation.
These phone calls often intimidate international students who do not do what they say they will soon be arrested or deported, and their families in China will be in danger.
After hours of intensive bombardment by several well-trained scammers, some international students often start to cooperate with them out of fear.
Scammers then control and induce international students to take scary pictures or videos, cry to their parents that they have been "kidnapped" (sometimes on the grounds of gambling or borrowing money from others), and ask for money transfers.
At the same time, scammers often threaten the parties not to inform anyone, including their parents, of the situation, let alone to report to the police, but to cut off all communication channels such as mobile phones and WeChat, hide in places such as knife hotels, and lose contact with the outside world, otherwise they will "have serious consequences".
Well, just after the international students consciously took a video or photo of the kidnapping and lost contact, the scammers began to contact the parents of the international students, falsely claiming that the children were "kidnapped" and defrauding the parents of a huge "ransom".
Because they couldn't contact their children, and there were pictures or videos of their children being humiliated, some parents quickly believed it and sent money to them according to the scammer's instructions, until the child was rescued after paying the money, and suddenly realized that it was all a trap...
As early as 2017, there were a number of virtual scams in Canada. Vancouver police said that from July 23 to July 30, in just one week, at least six female students from China in Metro Vancouver were defrauded, and the victims came from many different schools, including New Westminster, Vancouver, Richmond, Surrey, Burnaby and UBC.
In November 2017, five international students disappeared in the Toronto area within a few days.
Of course, these disappearances are all fake, and a few days later, these deceived international students are safe and sound, and there is a false alarm.
The Chinese Embassy in Canada and the Consulates General of the People's Republic of China issue announcements several times a year to remind Chinese students and Chinese citizens in their jurisdictions to remain vigilant and beware of telecommunication fraud.