There has been reports coming from Australia that Chinese students in the island nation is being part of a collusion of a criminal gang.
The students, with a very bizarre track record of reports behind them, are forced to fake their own deaths, forcing their families and relatives to be extorted by the masterminds. The scam has been called “virtual kidnapping”, with 8 students from New South Wales currently being identified as victims of the said crime. The known amount of the damages these families had to pay up was approximately $2.3 million, according to police reports.
The dynamics of each case is flabbergasting as the next: one father handed over a staggering faux ransom of $1.4 million for his daughter, while a family gathered around to collect $14,000 for their 22-year-old relative, communicating his dire state through WeChat. All these were safely located and secured by the NSW police.
According to reports, the victims are left “traumatized by what has occurred, believing they have placed themselves, and their loved ones, in real danger,” said NSW Assistant Commissioner Peter Thurtell.point 292 |
These students are mostly those in a very liable position in their Austral-Chinese Community.point 80 | The scammers finds these students by calling up random numbers, speaking in Mandarin to correctly identify their victim targets.point 190 | Then the scammers go on to be the members of the notorious Gong-An, or the Chinese police.point 264 |
They are led to believe that they have been convicted of an unknown crime charges, threatening them with expulsions and possible punishment of their Chinese family members.point 146 | It’s either the police, or they fake an embassy or a consulate in the Australian region, where they are then made to make a dire choice of their crimes.point 276 | 1
Their technology to deceive these vulnerable students are so sophisticated that they have no choice but to be led to believe that the case is a valid one.point 236 |
If victims look up the caller’s phone number online, it will match the number of Chinese police or the embassy, said Dr.point 107 | Lennon Chang, a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Australia’s Monash University.point 183 | According to the NSW police reports, they diverge in the following ways: One, that the victims are threatened with money transfers made by themselves.point 310 |
Or two, they are forced to as the case above shows, by faking their own abduction to let their families be extorted of their money.point 107 | 1
Replaced!