A STUDENT who is studying for a doctorate degree in Hong Kong was cheated out of 1 million yuan (US$145,100) by fraudsters who pretended to be law enforcement officers.

    The student, surnamed Chen, received a phone call April 13 from a man who claimed to be an officer with the Hong Kong Immigration Department surnamed Lin. The caller told Chen that his work ID number was 92629 and asked if Chen had ever applied for a travel permit for a woman named Zhang Qiaoling. Lin claimed that Zhang had been arrested for carrying a large amount of bank cards across the border to Hong Kong and might be involved in major economic crimes. Lin suggested that Chen call the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau and circumscribe his connection with Zhang by applying for a Case Reporting Certificate.

    It was a coincidence that Chen had recently applied for a Hong Kong travel permit for his wife and that he had lived in Shanghai for years before moving to Hong Kong.

    Chen had no doubts as the utterances of the caller seemed normal and he reported his name and work ID number during the call.

    Lin passed Chen’s phone call to a man surnamed Liu, who claimed to be head of the criminal investigation unit under the Xuhui District Public Security Bureau in Shanghai.

    Liu claimed that Zhang had been involved in money laundering and that police had seized a bank card with 2.58 million yuan registered under Chen’s name. Liu demanded that Chen cooperate in order to prove his innocence.

    At the same time, Liu showed the arrest warrant and asset freeze order over the phone, asking Chen not to leak the information as the case may have been linked to corruption of the police and telecommunications departments.

    Liu required that Chen follow their instructions to check his financial status by buying a new mobile phone, turning on the international roaming service and reserving a room in a Luohu hotel.

    After Chen checked into the hotel in Luohu, Liu passed the case to a man surnamed Hu, who claimed to be a prosecutor from Beijing.

    Hu’s attitude was stern and harsh and he told Chen that he could get arrested if he didn’t cooperate.

    Hu said that the asset freeze order had been revoked because of Chen’s cooperation with the police investigation, and that he could be bailed out by depositing 1 million yuan in his bank account. “I was scared and borrowed 550,000 yuan from eight friends using the excuse of studying overseas and deposited 1.05 million yuan into my account,” Chen said.

    Under the guidance of Hu, Chen downloaded a plug-in application from a website, which was later confirmed to be a phishing website bearing the name of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate.

    “I kept the computer on, but a blackout occurred on the screen, and I wasn’t aware of what had happened,” Chen said.

    Chen felt he might have been cheated and later reported the case to police in the early morning of April 14. He found that the 1.05 million yuan in his account had been transferred.

    “I learned that funds involved in such a fraud are hard to retrieve, but thanks to the police who work at Shenzhen’s anti-fraud center and employees of four banks who worked for an extra day on the weekend to check more than 2,000 bank accounts to intercept the 1 million yuan,” said Chen. (Han Ximin)