Chinese police conducted a major operation to arrest gaming scammers. In total, 469 people were detained during the day, who operated in 35 cities. On behalf of the girls, they lured men into games and forced them to spend money on various cosmetic items.JX Online 3
A large-scale operation was carried out on September 15, according to GameLook.
It was attended by over 350 police officers of Changchun City, who detained criminals in 17 different provinces.
According to the results of the preliminary investigation, a whole group of companies was responsible for organizing a fraudulent scheme in China. It worked as follows:
- the attackers entered into agreements with companies to promote games, after which they tricked users into certain titles;to do this, the scammers pretended to be women, met men on social networks and invited them to register in certain games;
- then the attackers encouraged the men to spend money on virtual marriages and the purchase of in—game items – all in order to impress their “girlfriend”;
- in order not to arouse suspicion as much as possible, fraudulent companies asked their employees to communicate with victims in audio and video chats;
- when the victims made transactions in the agreed titles, the attackers received a certain percentage for the attracted and solvent users.
- According to GameLook, this scheme was also used for money laundering for criminal purposes.
However, the material does not specify which games are in question.
Similar schemes have often been used by Chinese attackers in recent years. In April, the police of Liuliang city detained 19 suspects who posed as beautiful girls and tricked men into spending money on them in online games. Then the amount of damage amounted to over 1.6 million rubles ($247 thousand).
In 2019, almost 800 police officers from Guangzhou and Yangjiang arrested 202 people who used a similar scheme. In total, they managed to fraudulently get ¥ 10 million ($1.54 million).