LONGGANG police detained 17 suspects over online scams targeting minors who would be cajoled to use their parents’ mobile phones to transfer money to the fraudsters’ accounts.

A resident in Longgang District surnamed Wang woke up in the morning to find that his six-digit bank account balance had only 0.85 yuan (US$0.13), Shenzhen Evening News reported yesterday.

Wang checked his bank statement and found over 100,000 yuan had been transferred to his WeChat and Alipay accounts and then disappeared.

There were no abnormalities found on his phone, and WeChat Pay and Alipay said his accounts had not been used in other locations. Wang then sought help from Longgang police.

Under the police investigation, Wang’s money was transferred by his 11-year-old daughter who was scammed by a stranger on the short-video platform Douyin.

Police said the girl received a private message from this stranger to join a QQ chat group to earn free game skins.

After finding many members in the group had gained the free game skins in the chat group, she made an application for the skin.

However, after she scanned a QR code provided by the group leader, the leader said that she was not eligible as a minor. He advised the girl to use his father’s phone as the application can only be made on an adult’s phone.

The girl got her father’s phone without his knowledge and scanned the code again. However, a message popped up suggesting that the phone’s WeChat account will be frozen.

The girl got nervous because once his father’s WeChat account was frozen, her father would discover she had been using the phone to play games. The group leader “comforted” her that once she finished the identification process, her father’s WeChat account would be reactivated.

The group leader also made a video call to the girl. Nothing showed on the phone’s screen, except another QR code.

After a while, a serious voice came out of the phone, urging her to scan the code.

The girl got suspicious when she was asked to enter passwords. However, the group leader said, “I am helping you. Otherwise, your father will be sent to jail.”

Hearing this, the girl followed all directions step by step.

She finally realized that she made a mistake when all of her father’s money disappeared. In order to not let her father know about this, the little girl deleted her QQ account, chat history and money transfer records before returning the phone.

Wang’s daughter admitted to all these upon the police’s visit.

Based on clues offered by the girl, the police found the ring had been implicated in over 200 similar cases in the country.

In the end, Longgang police arrested 17 suspects in different places around the country.

(Wang Jingli)