A WOMAN lost over 3 million yuan (US$436,484) after she was fooled by a Qianhai-based company into making investments online, the Shenzhen Evening News reported Monday.

    The Hebei Province woman, identified as Qin, said that she was approached by a person who claimed to be a customer service officer with Scott Financial Research Institute in December on WeChat, after she had watched a video about Jiang Xinning — a senior financial planner and the institute’s honorary president — talking about investment skills.

    According to Qin, the officer suggested that she sign up for a nonpublic course consisting of classes given by Jiang and other financial planners and attendees of the course have to prove that they have at least 5 million yuan before they are allowed to sign up for the course. “They said that if you don’t have the money, it would be meaningless for you to attend the course,” Qin said.

    After negotiation, the officer said that Qin could sign up for the course by providing 1.3 million yuan. Following instructions from a person named Wang Lizhu, Qin downloaded the software and transferred 1.3 million yuan to a new account through the software Dec. 6.

    In the following two days, she was told to buy and sell an investment product on the Dalian Precious Metals Exchange via the software, which cost her 1.11 million yuan. Wang said that Qin’s losses were due to “operational errors,” and that she could join one of the company’s newly launched programs, which would help her redeem her losses. However, Wang said that Qin would have to invest another 3 million yuan to join.

    Qin then borrowed money from her family and friends and transferred 3 million yuan to the account via the software. Another person, surnamed Wu, who claimed to be a manager working with Jiang, advised Qin on when to buy and sell investment products, which resulted in her losing another 1.81 million yuan as of Dec. 20.

    “Then I finally realized it was a scam. I had lost over 3 million yuan in just two weeks,” she said. Her calls to Wang and Wu both went unanswered.

    Later Wu told a reporter during a phone interview that the company had been closed down and the team was dismissed.

    Qin sent messages to Jiang’s Weibo, but Jiang said that he didn’t know a manager surnamed Wu. “You must have been fooled by scammers,” Jiang replied, adding that he had never taught others when to buy and sell stocks, and that he had nothing to do with what happened to Qin.

    After calling the Dalian Precious Metals Exchange, Qin discovered that her investment account had been registered at a Qianhai-based company. According to Shenzhen’s market supervision bureau, the company was founded in January 2015, and was put on a watch list for its abnormal operations in October last year because it didn’t have an office at its registered address.

    The company’s official website is currently unavailable, leaving only a notice saying that the company’s services have been fully suspended since Jan. 16, due to “strategy adjustment.”

    Qin came to Shenzhen on Feb. 21 and reported the case to Nanshan police. Two other investors have complained against the company about having experiences similar to Qin’s. One of them lost 50,000 yuan and the other lost 80,000 yuan after the company tricked them into making investments.

    (Zhang Yang)