THE popular mobile game Glory of the King has attracted over 200 million players, but some swindlers are taking advantage of the game’s popularity to cheat players out of money, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported.

On May 23, officers from the Dongmen Police Station received a call from an 18-year-old woman known as Zou. The woman reported that she had been swindled out of 7,157 yuan (US$1,073) the night before as she attempted to top up her account on the mobile game.

Zou told the police that she chatted with a person on QQ, a Tencent instant messaging tool, to get help purchasing game coupons on the Internet. With the virtual coupons, Zou could buy game characters that would help her play the game better.

The seller claimed that he could help her recharge her account with an easier procedure. Believing what the seller said, Zou transferred 50 yuan through her QQ Wallet, an online payment tool, to the seller.

However, using the excuse that the money had not gone through the system properly, the seller asked Zou to pay another 388 yuan to test the system and that the fee would be returned to her after the first transaction progressed successfully.

Zou made the transaction, but the seller again told her that her account’s IP address was abnormal and that she needed to pay 888 yuan more to verify her account. After using several other excuses, like “risky account check” and “failed connection,” the seller had in total asked Zou to transfer more than 7,000 yuan, but the game coupons never showed up in Zou’s game account.

When Zou talked about this incident with her friend the next day, she eventually realized that she had been scammed, but she could not find the seller as she was blocked from the seller’s QQ. So, she called the police.

The police officers looked into the case with evidence provided by Zou and compared it with another 48 similar cases. The targets of suspicion were whittled down over one month to a man identified as Zhang, 17.

At the end of July, police arrived in Raoping, a city in Guangdong, and busted Zhang and an accomplice. Both suspects admitted to their scams and are now under criminal detention.

The police remind all game players not to trust any person or agency that boasts about offering easier approaches for topping up or recharging game accounts outside the games’ official channels. Parents are also warned about their underage children’s possible addiction to the mobile games because children are especially vulnerable to scams.

(Zhang Qian)