(ECNS) -- Police in south China's Guangdong Province recovered more than 100 million yuan (about $13.94 million) lost to bogus online investment and wealth-management scams in the first half of this year, the provincial public security department said.
From January to June, telecom-fraud alerts and cases across the province fell 17.2 percent and 17.4 percent year on year, respectively, while losses prevented or recovered reached 1.683 billion yuan. On fake online investment scams specifically, authorities issued 37,000 warnings and interventions, heading off 135 million yuan in potential losses.
Police said such scams mainly target people looking for wealth-management opportunities, dangling promises of "high returns" and "guaranteed profits" to lure victims onto fraudulent platforms.
Fraudsters often pose as "senior analysts" or staff of financial institutions, conjuring the illusion of instant riches through group chats and fake profit screenshots posted by accomplices, police said. They then push ideas such as "inside information" and "hedge arbitrage" to get victims to download counterfeit apps. Once small test withdrawals have built trust, they press for large investments on the pretext of a "market surge," then freeze withdrawals and vanish with the money.
In four representative cases, police in Shaoguan, Dongguan, Jieyang and Chaozhou intercepted victims' funds through rapid-response systems.
In Shaoguan, officers arrested a suspect on the spot just as a victim was about to hand over 300,000 yuan in cash, snapping the victim out of the scam. In Dongguan, police triggered cross-border coordination to intercept and fully refund 200,000 yuan that had been sent to an overseas account. In Jieyang and Chaozhou, patient persuasion and on-site demonstrations helped police recover 70,000 yuan and 100,000 yuan, respectively
(By Tang Yuxian)
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