A group who scammed more than 2 million yuan from about 100 people, was reportedly arrested by Chinese authorities on Sunday, December 16, 2018.
The scammers, known for targeting people mostly from other provinces, were arrested after a police operation. Thinking that by scamming in the province would evade the police proved them wrong. Unfortunately, no details can be given regarding the nationalities of the victims.
According to police reports, none of the suspects had stock trading or market analysis skills. The youngest suspect was noted to be 18-years old.
How they earn money
Members earned a base salary of 3000 yuan a month on top of 50-yuan commission each time they duped a victim.
It was in August this 2018 when the police launched an investigation and found that the ringleader of the group had set up a company registered in Foshan, Guangdong, with several others, using internet chat groups to contact and defraud investors.
One male victim had paid 1,680 yuan to join a WeChat insiders' discussion group for trading shares, which was specifically set up to swindle him. He did not know that all of the other members were fraudsters. Victims typically paid between 1,280 and 1,680 yuan to join a chat group.
Members would pretend to be share traders and financial experts, while gaining the trust of victims and will later recommend "bull stocks" for them to buy, police said.
When the victims lost money, the scam operators would blame market instability and will seek further investments in their scam from the investor.
"For every victim, they would make another group of about 40 or 50 people pretending to have lost money on the stock market as well," a police source was quoted as saying.
The scammers also used ID which was later found with cache of over a million forged documents
"But in these groups only one person was a genuine stock market investor, the rest were scammers. The scammers would make several fake WeChat groups like this with different people in each group."
