On the short video platform, the graceful female blogger claimed to be "sincerely recruiting friends", showed provocative words in the comment area, and took the initiative to leave contact information. Some people think it's an affair, but they don't know that it's just the beginning of a scam.
"These beautiful pictures and video accounts are all drainage methods for telecom network fraud." Zhu Guangyao, deputy head of the Investigation and Strike Brigade of the Ninth Detachment of the Criminal Investigation Corps of the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau, saw through the peach-colored traps carefully laid at a glance, and he and his colleagues continued to crack down on the "tool man" gang, exposing the cunning and harm of illegal drainage.
Illegal drainage is not only the source of telecom network fraud, but also the process of helping fraudsters screen accurate fraud targets. Similarly, criminal activities such as online gambling and pornography that are shady also need to be guided or created to find prey.
With the continuous strengthening of the prevention and crackdown on various cyber criminal activities, the criminal methods have also been upgraded and varied. As an upstream link, illegal drainage has gradually formed a professional and large-scale "black and gray industry" from online dark chains to offline small advertisements, and social harm has become increasingly prominent.
The draining trap of erotic seduction
On the screen, the swaying dancing female anchor "Yingying" took the initiative to add friends and sent very provocative messages, all of which was enough to make Xiaobai, a young man working alone in Shanghai, fascinated.
In June this year, Xiaobai paid attention to "Yingying" on the short video platform, although the video did not show his face, "but the figure is very good at a glance". To Xiaobai's surprise, "Yingying" took the initiative to send him a private message, saying that he was single and could get to know him, and left a string of QQ numbers directly.
After obtaining contact information through a message, the other party first teased him verbally, and then sent a few photos of his hot body, and then cut to the chase - using various reasons to let him participate in investment and financial management. In the end, the beauty was not seen, and the investment money was all lost.
"I thought it was a normal date between men and women, but I didn't expect the routine to be so deep." When he went to the Xinchang Police Station of the Pudong Public Security Bureau to report to the police, Xiaobai not only regretted his impulsiveness, but also felt confused by the fraud routine.
"It's like being brainwashed, completely out of control." Zhang Zhihao, a police officer from the Xinchang Police Station, told reporters that in cases of Internet fraud involving pornography, this situation is very common, the two sides are engaged in chatting, and some people think that they are in love, and even send some pictures of private parts to each other, which turns out to be a handle for fraudsters to manipulate them.
The police investigation found that the video account of the female anchor that Xiaobai followed was controlled by an illegal drainage gang. Core members Wu and Yang are responsible for docking with overseas fraud gangs, and according to the requirements of the other party, they publish some videos and pictures provided by overseas fraud gangs on social media platforms, and set peach-colored traps to attract male netizens.
In order to rub traffic, the gang will also leave messages with obvious suggestive meanings such as "single friends, looking for little brother" and "single appointment" in the comment area of "Internet celebrity bloggers" with a large number of fans, attracting male netizens to interact and increase attention to their accounts. "In the investigation of this kind of case, we found that some male netizens will really take the initiative to contact them by private message after seeing this kind of message in the comment area, so they gradually fall into the trap of illegal drainage." Zhang Zhihao said.
After adding the contact information of the "prey", Wu and Yang's gang then used carefully compiled words to gradually establish a relationship of trust through communication. Xiaobai encountered the task of spelling orders proposed by the "female anchor". "She asked me to spell orders with her on a foreign name Haitao App, saying that after reaching a certain level, the platform would give me cashback, so that I could rush to the level with her." Xiaobai recalled that this request was suddenly made by the two after an ambiguous conversation, "I didn't have any doubts at the time, so I followed her request."
Then, the traditional scam routine began. The so-called single-spelling platform is actually controlled by overseas fraud gangs, and the illegal drainage gang only needs to lead people to the platform, and the task is completed. "Overseas fraud gangs will pay Wu and Yang's gangs through virtual currency, and each person who successfully attracts traffic can get 18 yuan to 20 yuan." Zhang Zhihao said.
The use of pornography or soft pornography as bait is the most common method used by illegal diversion gangs, especially in some cases of online solicitation of prostitution. Based on the experience of handling cases, Zhu Guangyao told reporters that illegal drainage for online prostitution fraud criminal gangs usually publishes false pornographic drainage advertisements on the Internet, short videos and other platforms to lure victims to click. After that, they use free "dating" and "dating" as bait to induce victims to download fraudulent apps, and induce victims to engage in swiping, investing, or gambling in the name of completing tasks to enjoy free sexual services. "Some of the victims had impure intentions, and under the lure of illegal drainage gangs, they even took the initiative to enter the routine."
Pervasive means of drainage
In the complex online ecology, the pornographic trap hiding in the video platform is just a way to illegally attract traffic. Nowadays, the use of platforms to attract traffic, false recruitment on recruitment websites, mass SMS, mass emails, and illegal embedding of "dark links" are all common tricks used by gangs to illegally drain black and gray industries, involving a wide range of fields, which is difficult to prevent.
The reporter learned from the Criminal Investigation Corps of the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau that during the summer operation in 2024, the Shanghai police successively smashed nearly 30 criminal gangs involved in fraud and drainage and arrested more than 500 criminal suspects.
"In general, illegal drainage is mainly divided into online and offline channels." Zhu Guangyao said. In online channels, the first type is telephone drainage, which is common to make calls by fake customer service, often under the guise of promoting products and introducing loans. The second type is SMS drainage, which usually comes with various unknown links, or even directly sends links containing Trojan viruses. "As soon as you turn it on, the phone will be poisoned, and then you will ask for money in the form of AI fraud or direct threats using mobile phone information. The electronic fraud routine continues to escalate, and this kind of routine that mixes a variety of fraud methods such as prostitution, swiping, and gambling appears, and is well versed in the weaknesses of human nature, and the fraudsters have a clear division of labor, and people are often deceived. The third type is network drainage, "mainly through social platforms, as well as various network applications, as long as it has the function of leaving a message and private message, it may become an illegal drainage tool."
Including the peach trap, the illegal drainage industry of online platforms is very large. Industry insiders told reporters that at present, there are three ways for black and gray industry gangs to use the platform to illegally attract traffic, including diversion through private message barrage, display of illegal website information through "personalized signatures" and other methods in the profile homepage, and drainage through live broadcast content. "During the live broadcast, the anchor guides users to join third-party fan group chats, exchange groups, etc., through oral broadcasts, content scenes, public screen announcements, etc., and then pushes content related to pornography, gambling, and fraud through group chats."
When browsing a live broadcast platform, the reporter found that in addition to the behavior of draining traffic to illegal websites outside the site and chat groups involved in gambling and pornography through the live broadcast room, some anchors will also use the broadcast of vulgar videos or viewing vulgar live broadcasts to increase the popularity of the live broadcast, and tell the gambling gameplay in the live broadcast room, and divert traffic to the live broadcast room of the station that is suspected of gambling activities.
It is worth noting that some recruitment sites will also bury pits. In the case previously cracked by the Shanghai police, the suspect posted information on recruiting typists and hourly workers in batches on a recruitment website, and then introduced part-time information such as "helping anchors like and increase popularity" and "increasing sales of e-commerce stores" to willing applicants. "It looks like recruitment, but it's actually a telecom fraud that swipes orders." The police said that in order to cast a wide net to the maximum, the suspects often need to buy a large number of member accounts on recruitment websites, and some will also use fake business licenses to register.
Offline, the "small advertisements" and "small cards" that can be seen almost everywhere, as well as the promotion activities such as scanning codes and giving gifts, although the form is old, it is still a tried and tested way for illegal drainage gangs because it captures the psychology of specific groups of people.
The escalation of the game between the two sides
Illegal diversion of black and gray industries is the front-end link of many telecommunications network crimes, and the public security organs have significantly increased their efforts to crack down on them. Under the guidance of relevant departments, some internet platforms have also continuously improved their risk control capabilities and levels. However, in the face of interests, the means of illegally draining black and gray industry gangs are also escalating and changing, in an attempt to evade supervision and crackdown.
"In some diversion crimes, criminals hide their crime tools by modifying software, and some use group control and cloud control platforms to control multiple devices and multiple accounts, send text content involving pornography, gambling, fraud and other text content in batches, and circumvent the platform's black thesaurus through homophony, word splitting, etc." The above-mentioned industry insiders said.
The use of new Internet technologies and new forms of business to commit crimes, and even show a trend of precision and scenario-based, makes the governance of illegal drainage increasingly difficult.
"The purpose of the drainage gang is to expose, and it will use any place to expose, including the avatars and signatures of social software." Zhu Guangyao told reporters that the drainage gang will try their best to bypass the platform's restriction rules, and even crack communication protocols and algorithms, and finally achieve the goal of sending illegal information in batches.
Judging from the cases investigated and dealt with by the police, the trend of industrialization of illegal drainage gangs is particularly obvious. Wu and Yang's gang worked in an office building as a normal company, and most of the staff were young people between the ages of 18 and 25, each of whom had multiple mobile phones and a large number of "black cards". "They register and operate accounts on the short video platform for drainage, and if the account is seized or a user reports it, they don't need it, and they change the card and reopen it." Zhang Zhihao said.
In the more than 20 square meters of workshop, there are many large mobile phone holders, and hundreds of mobile phones are placed. In addition to operating female anchor accounts on video platforms, gang members also post links in different groups every day to spread obscene and pornographic content, which is accompanied by similar scam and diversion information.
"The industrial chain has long been formed, and this is just one of the chains." Industry insiders said. In fact, there is also an upstream for illegal drainage. For example, tool developers, card merchants who resell black cards, etc. According to the needs of the midstream and the downstream, produce and provide all kinds of black ash production resources, and then package and resell all kinds of black ash production resources to the downstream in batches through the midstream account consignment platform, tool consignment platform, underground black market and other channels. Downstream businesses usually exist in the form of studios to carry out black and gray industry behaviors, such as brushing studios, drainage studios, etc.
In order to prevent traceability and evade censorship, some illegal drainage gangs have also continuously broken down the operation process through cross-border and cross-regional cooperation, disguising their identities layer by layer, and the difficulty of supervision has increased significantly.
The challenge of strengthening governance at the source
In the face of the endless emergence of illegal diversion criminal gangs, the police's investigation work is facing considerable challenges. A police officer told reporters that when many victims came to report the crime, they had already cleaned up all the chat records, and the police had no way to judge useful information through chats, so they could only continue to trace through the account number of the transfer. "Some fraudsters have moved overseas, and through rented servers or computer equipment, they only need to install remote control software to operate, and they can only find these leased machines."
"Cyberspace is not like a real crime scene, there are no obvious traces, only a large amount of various types of data, and our job is to dig out the correlation from the massive data." Zhu Guangyao said.
Industry insiders pointed out that in the black and gray industry of illegal drainage, the account used for drainage in the chain is the key. "Some are registered by purchasing black cards, some are registered through code receiving platforms, and some even lease other netizen accounts through online crowdsourcing."
Therefore, it is crucial to crack down on the source of these illegal accounts. In recent years, the public security organs have continued to intensify their efforts to crack down on the illegal sale of "two cards", and at the same time, they have also investigated and dealt with the illegal acquisition of resources and the registration of online accounts.
On the basis of the severe crackdown, the Shanghai police have also worked closely with relevant competent departments to promote joint management, further strengthen security management, plug management loopholes, and urge all online platforms to implement their main responsibilities.
On the other side of the screen, the gang members involved in the illegal diversion are also the source. "Judging from the cases we have investigated, there is a clear trend of young age among the members of these gangs. Because of the increasingly hidden drainage methods, the operator itself needs to have certain network skills. Zhu Guangyao said.
The reporter learned that most of the people in the illegal drainage industry, especially those involved in the operation of pornographic drainage, are low-income young men, and some of them are gradually absorbed into criminal gangs through part-time jobs. "Some people know it, and some people think that they are just participating in the promotion and drainage, and the consequences are not so serious."
"If the participants are aware of the fraud and still participate, they may constitute an accomplice to the crime of fraud or the crime of aiding information network criminal activities." Ying Huipeng, director of the Shanghai Economic Construction Law Firm, said that according to the Criminal Law, if he clearly knows that others are using information networks to commit crimes, and provides them with technical support such as Internet access, server hosting, network storage, and communication transmission, or provides assistance such as advertising and promotion, payment and settlement, and the circumstances are serious, he shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years or short-term detention and/or a fine.
Source: Shangguan News