When returning the car, they mistakenly deposited a deposit and intentionally covered up the damage to the car. The Shanghai police exposed the trick of renting a car: a gimmick for renting luxury cars at low prices | customers | renting cars
First, attract car rental customers with the gimmick of renting luxury cars at low prices, and then fabricate excuses to rent damaged cars to customers. When customers return the car, the deposit is withheld on the grounds of damage. The seemingly seamless fraud scheme was eventually exposed by the police. Recently, the Xuhui police cracked a routine car rental fraud case and arrested two suspect.
"The original price is 960 yuan per day, but the current price is only 548 yuan per day, with no deposit." Recently, Mr. Li, a citizen, saw this advertisement for renting a luxury car at a low price on a car rental platform and placed an order without much thought. But when he went to pick up the car, the merchant Wu claimed that he had already rented out the car models he ordered on the platform and could provide higher end models for him to use, but he needed to provide a verification code to cancel the previous order and switch to offline leasing.
Mr. Li hesitated. Mr. Wu hurried to show him the collection records of Alipay, saying that many customers operated in this way, so that he did not have to worry, and helped him to handle the refund of online orders. After confirming receipt of the refund, Mr. Li re paid the rental fee and deposit as requested by Mr. Wu, totaling over 8600 yuan.
![When returning the car, they mistakenly deposited a deposit and intentionally covered up the damage to the car. The Shanghai police exposed the trick of renting a car: a gimmick for renting luxury cars at low prices | customers | renting cars](https://a5qu.com/upload/images/756b8e2629251f3a779b317cbf583d76.jpg)
However, when returning the car, Wu requested a delay in refunding the deposit of 8000 yuan, citing a damaged windshield. After waiting for several days without any results, Mr. Li prepared to contact Wu, but found that his car rental account had been inexplicably cancelled and he was unable to contact Wu.
Based on the clues provided by Mr. Li, the police conducted an investigation. By retrieving public videos from the vicinity of the incident, the police discovered that Wu and another man had intentionally obstructed a damaged crack on the front windshield by adjusting the rearview mirror. "Wu deliberately chose to contact tenants at night and in dimly lit areas to pick up the car, clearly prepared," they said.
During the investigation of the case, the Xuhui police received two other vehicle rental disputes related to Mr. Wu, which were exactly the same as Mr. Li's experience. The police determined that this was a fraud case under the guise of vehicle rental. After obtaining relevant criminal evidence, the Xuhui police arrested the suspects Wu and Tong on July 5th.
![When returning the car, they mistakenly deposited a deposit and intentionally covered up the damage to the car. The Shanghai police exposed the trick of renting a car: a gimmick for renting luxury cars at low prices | customers | renting cars](https://a5qu.com/upload/images/4beffbdee42c61f5ba11b2a385981a2f.jpg)
According to the investigating authorities, the two suspects first used the gimmick of "renting luxury cars at low prices" to attract customers, and then deliberately covered up the damaged parts of the vehicles, withholding the deposit when the customers returned the car. During the process, they will ask the victim for the verification code of the car rental platform, with the aim of canceling the other party's account and leaving no room for complaint.
At present, suspect Wu and Tong have been detained by Xuhui police according to law for fraud, and the case is still under further investigation.