paint spraying, ordinary quartz stone turns into raw jade stone in seconds; live broadcast of stone opening, opening and closing is all decided by the anchor; on-site recycling, criminals dress up in multiple roles to buy and sell...it seems like "fighting for luck" in the live broadcast room The rough stone trading is actually a scam carefully designed and fully controlled by fraudsters. The Shanghai police started with a reported case of being deceived into buying raw jade stones, dug deep into the background, and finally succeeded in uncovering a fraud gang that used fake stone cutting and fake recycling methods to defraud money under the guise of "live broadcast selling jade raw stones." 35 criminal suspects including Jiang were arrested, and the amount involved amounted to more than 2 million yuan.
Recently, the Shanghai police discovered during their work that a group of criminals were committing fraud in the online live broadcast space. They defrauded money under the guise of dating, making friends, and selling goods through live broadcasts. Through the "Strike Sword 2024" series of special operations, the Shanghai police continued to severely crack down on and strictly prevent telecom network fraud. The number of completed and filed telecom fraud cases in the city continued to maintain a "double decline" on the basis of last year's "five-year consecutive decline" ”, a year-on-year decrease of 15.5% and 20.8% respectively. Relying on the front-end early warning and fund prevention system, the Shanghai police have visited more than 73,000 people to remind and dissuade them, blocked more than 29,000 fraudulent transfers, and directly avoided losses of more than 510 million yuan.
He was blacklisted after paying for rough stones
In October 2023, the Pudong Branch of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau received a report from Mr. Fan, a citizen, saying that he transferred 2,688 yuan to the merchant "Senhan Jewelry Store" on an online live broadcast platform to purchase jade. Qian was kicked out of the live broadcast room, and WeChat was blocked by customer service.
Mr. Fan told the police that when he was browsing short videos, he came across an advertisement for "Buying and selling jade in the live broadcast room, and there are benefits for newcomers", so he added the customer service WeChat account. The customer service told me that as long as I entered the live broadcast room, I could get a rough stone for free, and pushed a link to the live broadcast platform and the live broadcast room number. After entering the live broadcast room, I saw the anchor and a self-proclaimed jade merchant introducing a bright gray stone with a price tag of 8,880 yuan. It was quickly bought by 10 buyers. Then the anchor walked to the corner and turned his back to the camera. "Cut the stone", there was a loud cutting sound, and when I turned around again, the corners of the stone in my hand had been cut, revealing a bit of "green" that looked like jade. The jade merchant immediately offered to recycle the jade for 10,800 yuan. In just a few minutes, the 10 buyers collectively earned a price difference of 1,920 yuan.
After watching several rounds of stone mining and trading, Mr. Fan couldn't help but be tempted by such a short-term, high-return trading method, so he began to participate in joint buying. Within two days, he transferred more than 12,000 yuan and bought and sold 12 orders, with some profits and some losses. After the last payment, I was kicked out of the live broadcast room, and customer service lost contact.
Meticulous investigation locked the den.
The stone mining process was completely invisible. The rough stones were sold but not shipped but recycled on the spot. After large transfers, they were immediately blacklisted and lost contact... These details that were different from normal shopping attracted the attention of the Pudong police. According to the investigation, This was a new method of defrauding people in the name of buying and selling rough stones, so a task force was formed to carry out investigation. While searching for the victim buyers to obtain more evidence, they also organized police forces to go to Yunnan to investigate the criminal dens.
Mr. Li, who lives in Sichuan and suffered losses of more than 350,000 yuan, did not realize he had been deceived until the Shanghai police came to his door. In one month, he made a total of 41 payments to the other party's account through bank transfers, with the highest amount reaching 160,000 yuan. It was not until the last transfer of 5,000 yuan that he was kicked out of the live broadcast room and blocked by the other party. During this period, he only made money from two small orders, and he always thought it was because he was unlucky and failed to open the stone that he lost money. There are many similar situations, and most victim buyers are unaware that they have been deceived.
In Yunnan, police investigation found that the so-called "Senhan Jewelry Store" did not exist, but was just a fictitious store. Starting from the suspect's identity information they already had, and after many days of visits and investigations, the task force discovered a suspicious villa in a local villa area where live broadcast e-commerce companies gathered. It was brightly lit late at night, and there were waves of people cutting stones from time to time. The sound of machinery and various signs indicate that this is the live broadcast hideout of the fraud gang.
elaborately designed the rough diamond scam
After mastering sufficient evidence and figuring out the activities of the fraud gang, on the evening of December 29 last year, the task force launched an arrest operation with the support of the local public security agency and arrested 35 people headed by Jiang on the spot. A large number of items involved in the case, including computers, mobile phones, paint, rough stones, and script books, were seized from the suspect at the scene.
After investigation, in order to obtain illegal benefits, the criminal suspect Jiang and others purchased a pile of ordinary quartz stones produced locally, sprayed them with paint and conducted false stone openings and joint purchases in the live broadcast room under the name of "jade stone". , False recycling, defrauding victim buyers of money. The members of the
gang have a clear division of labor. The traffic flow personnel are responsible for advertising on the short video platform to attract potential victims, while the customer service personnel further screen the targets through chat communication and introduce them to the "tailor-made" live broadcast room. Other members formed a live broadcast team. Under the command of the team leader, those who played the role of anchors and jade merchants sang and touted their business in front of the camera, while those who played the role of audience helped warm up the atmosphere and pretended to participate in the purchase of rough stones in the audience. In fact, the surface and cut surfaces of the rough stones used in the live broadcast room are spray-painted, and the corresponding rough stones are selected according to transaction needs to control the results of the stone opening. The rough stones that have been repainted afterwards will return to the live broadcast room, truly achieving "zero loss".
According to Jiang’s confession, there was only one victim in these live broadcast rooms from beginning to end, and other viewers were pretended to be gang members who controlled multiple or even dozens of accounts. As long as the victim enters the live broadcast room, the fraudsters will start their own performances according to the script, continue to buy and sell rough stones, create a warm atmosphere, and induce the victim to participate in the purchase. Once the victim places an order, they will initially place some small orders to allow the victim to make a small amount of money to attract them to continue placing orders, and then slowly increase the price of rough stones until enough money is defrauded. And if the victim is never interested in large orders, they will promptly kick him out of the live broadcast room. In order to settle the matter, the fraud gang will also send fake jade pendants to the victims seeking explanations.
After preliminary verification, since October 2023, this fraud gang has defrauded more than 2 million yuan from all over the country. At present, 35 criminal suspects including Jiang have been arrested by the procuratorate in accordance with the law on suspicion of fraud, and the case is under further investigation.
Since this year, the Pudong police have continued to pay attention to this type of jade trading fraud. They have proactively conducted online inspections and offline reports to investigate relevant criminal clues and severely crack down on this type of fraud. So far, they have destroyed 6 fraud gangs in other provinces and cities. 130 criminal suspects were arrested, and the amount involved was more than 20 million yuan.
Combination punches accurately strike
According to the police, there are currently several main methods of online live broadcast.
Love and dating scams. Scammers, under the guise of being in love and making friends as "online anchors", lure victims to the live broadcast room to watch the live broadcast, and gradually lure the victim into a love trap through offline meetings and other hints. Let them recharge in the live broadcast room to give gifts or help defeat opponents to win PK, so as to achieve the purpose of defrauding money.
Fake online shopping, fraudsters release some health products and collectibles through online live broadcast platforms to attract victims to buy, and then defraud money through false links, shoddy goods, false shipments, etc. The so-called "audience" in the live broadcast room "Most of them are scammers' vests." In the
live broadcast course sales category, fraudsters often take advantage of the victim's desire for quick profits and publish "sell course" information such as account operations and live broadcast goods through the live broadcast platform, attracting victims to actively contact them. At first, the fraudsters will charge a small "course purchase" fee to allow the victim to watch replays of the course normally, or send some temporary links for learning. When the victim relaxes his vigilance and increases his trust, he will then induce the victim to pay a large amount. After paying for the course, it will be blocked and deleted.
In the investment subscription category, fraudsters publish a large number of videos on short video platforms to attract target groups, fabricate products and commodity values, and gradually induce customers to purchase physical goods. For example, the recently common "jade live broadcast" fraud method attracts victims to invest and subscribe, thereby defrauding money.
live streaming category, where the traffic gang buys and controls a large number of short video platform accounts, releases relevant videos and traffic QR codes that have been produced in advance, and then increases exposure through online live broadcasts and other methods, attracting users to other platforms or adding customer service contact information , customer service continues to use layers of tricks to gain users' trust, and then implements order fraud, naked chat fraud, etc.
In response, the Shanghai police has launched a full-scale crackdown on the use of online live broadcasts to commit fraudulent criminal activities, constantly squeezing the living space of such crimes. Launch special governance actions together with relevant platforms to strengthen risk prevention and control beforehand. While improving department supervision and corporate autonomy, we will focus on cracking down on issues such as black and gray live broadcasting through regular inspections and centralized rectification, and continue to create a good online live broadcast environment; through police situation analysis, clue gathering, and merging of similar cases, we will comprehensively analyze the trend of crime occurrences in each stage, comprehensively understand the relationship network between the live broadcast development platform and lower-level agents, clarify the organizational structure of the gang at all levels, and conduct in-depth investigation and expansion of crimes. The gang and its associated personnel strive to catch all the gangs in one fell swoop; through "combination techniques" such as starting current cases, sorting out old cases, multi-dimensional expansion, and centralized closing of the network, arrest plans are formulated one by one for the suspects who have found their true identities to ensure a precise attack.
The police remind citizens to consciously resist bad temptations when surfing the Internet and develop healthy Internet habits. Anyone who claims to be an anchor, anchor assistant or platform customer service and actively adds friends must be carefully verified and do not be gullible. When shopping online, do not leave the supervision of the platform, do not invest and manage money on websites or software of unknown origin, and do not scan or click on QR codes and unknown links sent by strangers at will, and beware of being deceived.
Author: Zhou Chen
Text: Zhou Chen Pictures: Photos provided by interviewees Editor: Shan Yingwen Editor: Wang Jiayi
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