57 Online Dating Fraudsters Jailed in China
57 people have been jailed for their involvement with online dating scams in China.
The fraud ring, which mainly consisted of members of the same family, is believed to have commited over 140 crimes since 2015. It’s estimated that they stole at least 1 million yuan, equivalent to almost $150,000.
They were sentenced to between six months and 11 years in prison, and fined between $30,000 and $4.4 million.
The fraudsters all pretended to be young women to try and trick single men into giving them money.
Police in China were alerted by a young man, named Liu, who became suspicious after an interaction he had on WeChat.
The South China Morning Post reported “[his] fake girlfriend promised to pay Liu a visit, but then pretended to have broken “her” mobile phone and been involved in a traffic accident before asking for 7,000 yuan to cover the cost of these mishaps.”
Criminals using online dating as a means to steal money continues to be a global challenge. UK Action Fraud have recently partnered with Scamalytics to provide data on fake profiles to the online dating industry, in an attempt to limit the number of scam accounts.
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