The scammer was married and had children, and was defrauded of 640,000 yuan. A Shanghai game anchor and a female fan had been in an online relationship for 7 years and had never met in person.
A game anchor and a "beautiful" fan had been dating online for 7 years, transferring 260 times for a total of 640,000 yuan, but they never met. In the end, it was discovered that the tortuous relationship was a long-planned "pig-killing" scam. Recently, the Jing'an Branch of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau cracked this online dating fraud case, and part of the defrauded money has been recovered.
On May 27 this year, game anchor Mr. Wang went to the Zhijiang West Road Police Station of the Jing'an Branch of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau to report that he was defrauded by his girlfriend Zeng, with whom he had been dating online for seven years, and lost nearly 640,000 yuan.
At the end of 2017, Mr. Wang met Zeng, who gave him gifts, during a live broadcast. The two added each other on WeChat and often met to play games and chat in a team. Soon they confirmed their "relationship". According to Mr. Wang, Zeng often posted "selfies" on social media. Not only was he good-looking, but he also had a high-end social circle. Zeng also took good care of him, which made Mr. Wang feel very warm.
After two years of online dating, Zeng suddenly told Mr. Wang that she had depression and her mother was seriously ill, and hinted that Mr. Wang should provide financial support. Mr. Wang immediately expressed his willingness to share the hardships with his "girlfriend". After that, Zeng asked Mr. Wang for money every now and then, citing medical treatment, family changes, and various trivial matters in life as reasons.
Out of emotional "sense of responsibility", for many years, Mr. Wang gave most of his work income to this "girlfriend" whom he had never met for safekeeping, and a total of 260 remittances totaling nearly 640,000 yuan.
During the seven-year "online romance", Mr. Wang also asked for offline meetings or video calls, but Zeng avoided meeting him with excuses such as "busy work", "illness" and "accident". During this period, Zeng's friends continued to update, showing her going to the hospital for medical treatment or traveling on business.
It was not until April this year that Mr. Wang saw a female blogger's photo on the Internet that was exactly the same as many of Zeng's photos in Moments. Later, he also found that other bloggers' photos had also appeared in Zeng's Moments. Only then did he realize that his online girlfriend might be a scammer.
Based on the clues provided by Mr. Wang, the police quickly found out Zeng's true identity. The woman who claimed to be surnamed Zeng was actually named Zhang Mouyun, married with a son. Her age, appearance and life experience were completely inconsistent with what she described to Mr. Wang. After obtaining relevant evidence, on June 6 this year, the police from Zhijiang West Road Police Station arrested Zhang Mouyun, who was suspected of fraud, in a factory in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province.
After Zhang Mouyun was arrested, she confessed that she had already started to formulate a fraud plan and carefully created a persona before she met Mr. Wang: She first used online pictures to carefully "decorate" her social accounts, took the initiative to contact the victim, used rhetoric to gain trust and establish a romantic relationship, and then used stolen blogger photos to create a good-looking, independent, and ill-fated character image. Afterwards, she induced the victim to become emotionally dependent on her in the name of love, in order to achieve the purpose of long-term defrauding money.
During the "relationship", Zhang often had disputes with Mr. Wang over "meeting in person" and financial issues, and broke up with him many times. But whenever she was short of money, she would take the initiative to "reconcile" with Mr. Wang to continue the fraud.
According to the police, after the scam was exposed by Mr. Wang, Zhang Mouyun did not stop, but quickly found a "buyer" and attempted to replicate the scam, but was arrested before he could carry it out.
At present, the suspect Zhang Mouyun has been criminally detained by Jing'an police in accordance with the law on suspicion of fraud. The police have recovered part of the money involved in the case and the case is under further investigation.
