How scammers are ‘virtually kidnapping’ Chinese students in Australia

Scammers are “virtually kidnapping” Chinese overseas students in order to extort money from their families, according to police.

The bad actors call their targets without warning, speaking in Mandarin and professing to work for Chinese officials – whether an embassy, consulate, police, or prosecution authority.

In one call, the scammer said: “I’ll first introduce myself to you, I am a police officer of the Public Security Bureau …We are in the process of recording you, you cannot have anyone else with you during this call.”

NSW Police Detective Superintendent Joe Doueihi said they’ve received four reports of “virtually kidnapping” of Chinese students in Sydney alone, all in the last month.

He said they can be “both random and targeted”, and typically start with a cold call to “young, international Chinese students”.

“The victims are told they’ve committed some type of crime and they need to pay money to avoid being arrested or deported,” he said.

“The victims are also threatened with harm to their families who reside in China and that if they do not comply with the offender’s request the family in China will be harmed.”

One family transferred $270,000, while another victim transferred $20,000 of her own money into an offshore account.

“The victims are coerced into faking their own kidnapping, taking photos of themselves in vulnerable positions and sending those photographs to their families in China and seeking that the family pays a ransom for their release,” Superintendent Doueihi said.

In 2020, police saw a substantial surge in these scams, but they dropped down following a significant media campaign and during the height of the epidemic, when Chinese overseas students fled Australia.

The Chinese officials are so anxious about the new reports that they have made the extraordinary decision to appear in front of Australian journalists.

According to Zhang Zhengping, the police liaison officer at the Chinese Embassy in Canberra, virtual kidnapping has become one of the most common forms of telecom fraud.

He stated that the embassy intends to work closely with authorities and assess existing practices to combat fraud.

“The crime knows no bounds or nationality. It does not discriminate. It happens across all ages, genders, and all socioeconomic levels,” he said.

Scammers are utilizing technology to mimic actual phone numbers of authorities, further tricking victims into believing the call is authentic, according to reports.

Police advise anyone who receives a fraudulent call to simply hang up.

How scammers are ‘virtually kidnapping’ Chinese students in Australia

News Desk

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