AS the HPV9 vaccines approved on the Chinese mainland are only available for women between the ages of 16 and 26, a resident identified as Zhou Ting wanted to go to Hong Kong for the inoculation as she was about to turn 30.

However, the deposit that she paid to the intermediaries seemed to have gone down the drain as the key intermediary was nowhere to be found, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported.

According to Zhou, she heard from a friend in August that a person called “Meiyijia” on China’s Twitter-like Weibo was able to provide reservation services to receive HPV vaccine injections in Hong Kong.

Zhou befriended “Meiyijia” on WeChat. “Meiyijia,” surnamed Li, is an online celebrity on Weibo and a medical student at a Guangdong university.

Li told Zhou that the fee for three injections of the HPV9 vaccine was HK$7,800 (US$996) and that the injection series would be completed within half a year.

The reservation required a deposit of HK$4,800 and Zhou would have to pay the remaining HK$3,000 after she arrived at the Hong Kong clinic, according to Li, who added that she didn’t collect intermediary fees and her salary was paid by the clinic.

Li eventually introduced Zhou to another woman surnamed Xu. Zhou later realized that Li had extracted some of the deposit as a service charge and transferred the rest to Xu. Li rarely contacted the clinic herself to make appointments.

However, just days before Zhou was scheduled to receive her first injection, Li proposed that Zhou transfer the remaining money to the clinic in advance, and she transferred the remaining HK$3,000 to Xu.

When Zhou arrived in Hong Kong, Xu told her that the money hadn’t been transferred to the clinic yet and that she would have to pay the fee at the clinic.

Zhou was not the only victim of the scam. Many victims told the Daily that Xu had probably only made the appointment for the first injection, as there were no second or third injections. Dozens of women in Shenzhen have been swindled out of hundreds of thousands of yuan.

Xu, the key intermediary in the case, is a medical school student in Xiamen City, Fujian Province. She is also a permanent Hong Kong resident.

Many victims said they haven’t been able to contact Xu for a long time. (Zhang Yu)