A foreign student caught up in an elaborate \u2018Chinese officials\u2019 financial scam was made to hire an Auckland hotel room where he faked his own kidnapping to convince family to send money to offshore criminals.<\/p>\n
Police say the man was instructed under duress to spend 10 days in the hotel and make videos of himself to send to relatives in China warning of the kidnapping plot and begging for them to wire funds to safeguard his life.<\/p>\n
Police have described the scenario as \u201cessentially a hostage situation\u201d.<\/p>\n
Detectives from Auckland City\u2019s financial crime unit say more victims have come forward in the last month as organised criminal groups, likely based in Hong Kong or mainland China, target Chinese students or older Chinese migrants now living in Auckland.<\/p>\n
The scammers impersonate Chinese government officials and claim the victim has been implicated in a foreign crime, usually money laundering, being investigated offshore.<\/p>\n
They are told to remit large sums of money to foreign bank accounts to remedy their legal situation.<\/p>\n
In some cases, the criminals, who use WeChat or WhatsApp to communicate, have detailed information about the victim\u2019s family, who are also threatened as part of the sinister conspiracy.<\/p>\n
Two victims have lost a combined $560,000 while a third was on the hook for $600,000 before police learned of the fraud.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlready the sums that we\u2019ve seen are eye-watering,\u201d Detective Sergeant Tony Darvill told the\u00a0Herald<\/i>.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why we need to get in front of it so we can stop this happening and take New Zealand off the map as a community to offend in for global criminals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Darvill said the scammers provide fake arrest warrants, non-disclosure agreements and asset seizure notices to add legitimacy to the sophisticated ruse.<\/p>\n
They present elaborate, scripted stories, and have impersonated Chinese embassy staff, police, Customs officials and even the Chinese attorney-general.<\/p>\n
n a ploy to exert control over victims, the scammers schedule regular video \u201ccheck-ins\u201d to ensure they are complying with instructions and not talking to anyone about their terrifying ordeal.<\/p>\n
In several cases, students were made to hire Auckland hotel rooms in order to isolate them from their support networks while the scam played out.<\/p>\n
\u201cScared people are going to do this,\u201d Darvill said. \u201cThey\u2019re scared and confused. But clearly, no legitimate government department is going to make you do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The male student who spent 10 days alone in a hotel last year was \u201ccoached\u201d by the scammers to pretend he had been kidnapped in order to convince his family to wire funds.<\/p>\n
Police caught wind of the scam and contacted the man before any money was sent.<\/p>\n
SOURCE NZ HERALD<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A foreign student caught up in an elaborate \u2018Chinese officials\u2019 financial scam was made to hire an Auckland hotel room where he faked his own kidnapping to convince family to send money to offshore criminals. Police say the man was instructed under duress to spend 10 days in the hotel and make videos of himself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6550,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6548\/revisions\/6550"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}