A 73-year-old woman was defrauded of 250,000 by her "American general boyfriend". How was she defrauded?

The deceived Ms. Zhu passed a WeChat friend application in April this year. The other person claimed that she was an American and an American general. She was currently fighting in Syria. She could only type but not speak. In Chinese, his name is Robert Mason. After understanding the situation, the two had a very speculative chat. Robert also said that he fell in love with each other and wanted to leave the United States, and then took Ms. Zhu to buy a house in Beijing and get married. Various sweet words captured Ms. Zhu’s heart. At the end of June, Robert claimed that he would send some special products to Ms. Zhu, but he would need to pay customs duties. I hope Ms. Zhu can pay in advance. Ms. Zhu transferred her ID number and money without thinking too much. Later, he asked Ms. Zhu to transfer money for various reasons, and said: You are my wife, I am your husband, etc. to stabilize the other party. Ms. Zhu had received text message reminders and bank staff’s dissuasion, but she still did not stop the transfer. It wasn’t until later that all the money was defrauded that I realized what I was doing, and then I went to the police station to report the crime. What questions did the police ask?

The police asked Ms. Zhu if she had ever met Robert via video. Ms. Zhu said that she had had a video chat and the other party was indeed a foreigner. Since I don’t understand English, I didn’t know what he was talking about during the video. I also asked Ms. Zhu if she had received anti-fraud knowledge propaganda before. Ms. Zhu said that she had, but she had never thought that it would really happen to her. Fortunately, Ms. Zhu woke up in time, otherwise the loss would have been more serious.

How to prevent such scams?

Don’t add strangers as friends casually. Be vigilant if the other party borrows money from you in any name. For netizens who have never met in person, you can completely refuse. If you want to borrow money from an acquaintance, you must first verify the true situation. In addition, download the Anti-Fraud Center APP on your mobile phone to monitor whether there are scammers on your phone in real time? When a reminder appears in the software, the transfer should be stopped as soon as possible. To be honest, Ms. Zhu, it is difficult to recover the money because the other party is abroad, and even if the police identify the suspect, they cannot blatantly go to the United States to arrest him.