The experience of some short video anchors earning "a lot of money" has made many netizens envious, and they are always eager to replicate their success. Ms. Zhang from Xiangshan County, Zhejiang Province, is also one of them, but what she didn't expect was that she fell into the trap carefully designed by the scammers.
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In December 2023, when Ms. Zhang was watching a short video, someone took the initiative to add her as a friend, claiming to be the "customer service" of the "largest Internet celebrity incubation base in Southwest China", and as long as 499 yuan, she could provide unlimited live broadcast training materials.
In order to dispel Ms. Zhang's concerns, the other party also sent a chat record of the "student" getting a high income, which made Ms. Zhang very excited and immediately paid 499 yuan.
Soon after, Ms. Zhang found that although she added some "fans" to her short video account, most of them were useless "zombie fans", and the video materials provided by the "customer service" were not of high quality, and they rarely passed the review of the short video platform.
Ms. Zhang questioned the "customer service". But subsequently, the "customer service" tricked her into continuing to pay the fee on the grounds of upgrading services, special activities, "opening blue V", "participating in the 100,000 yuan return fund activity" and other reasons, with a total of 102,900 yuan.
At this point, Ms. Zhang finally realized that she had been deceived, and immediately reported the case to the Danxi Police Station of the Xiangshan County Public Security Bureau.
In response to this new type of wire fraud case, the Xiangshan County Public Security Bureau immediately set up a special case team to repeatedly study and judge the case. Under the guidance of the superiors, the case was dug deeply, and then a large cross-provincial cybercrime gang "surfaced".
The task force found that the gang had a meticulous division of labor and strict management, relying on a short video app to find the target object, and using "increasing fans" and "bringing goods to obtain huge benefits" as bait to trick victims across the country into paying fees.
In February 2024, the task force determined that the gang was entrenched in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, and immediately organized more than 200 police officers to carry out a net collection operation. More than 130 criminal suspects were arrested, 189 mobile phones and 145 computers involved in the case were seized on the spot, more than 200 bank cards were frozen, more than 1,000 yuan of funds were frozen, and the amount involved in the case reached 180 million yuan.
This is also an anti-fraud operation in which the Xiangshan Public Security Department has dispatched the largest number of police officers at one time in recent years, arrested the largest number of people, and achieved fruitful results.
The suspect confessed that the claims of "the largest Internet celebrity incubation base in southwest China" and "successful incubation of millions of fans Internet celebrities" are all lies, and the victim's rising fans are actually "zombie fans" purchased by the gang online.
At present, the case is under further investigation.
Source: Rule of Law Daily, Reporter: Wang Chun, People's Daily