A TOTAL of 47 single men and women were swindled out of nearly 12 million yuan (US$1.76 million) on online dating websites over the past few months, according to data released by the police authority in Longgang District. Of 28 victims on three platforms, 22 are women with an average age of 36 and were defrauded out of 450,000 yuan on average, the data suggested. A woman identified as Wu Li, who is close to 40 years old and living in Longgang District, befriended a man identified as Wang Qiang on an online dating platform, according to a report on oeeee.com Wang told Wu that he was working for a gambling website and he could utilize the bugs in the website to earn extra money. One day, Wang asked Wu to help him deal with an account registered on the website. Following Wang’s instructions, Wu successfully logged in on the website where the account displayed a balance of over 200,000 yuan. Later, Wu won 60,000 yuan with the help of Wang. Wang then asked Wu to help cash out 230,000 yuan. After the operation, Wang received a message from the bank and he immediately showed the message to Wu. Wu won another 1.5 million yuan under Wang’s instruction the next day. Lured by the huge profits, Wu opened her own account on the website and won 50,000 yuan very soon. However, she failed to cash out the money after a few more wins. The result was that Wu was cheated out of 2 million yuan within a week. According to the report, this cheating method had already become a system that was well-known among crooks in Southeast Asia. Similar tactics include asking for money to help treat relatives’ diseases or to handle car accidents. (Wang Jingli) |