8-Year-Old Gamer Takes 500 Million VND from Mother to Spend on Games
Mrs. La has an 8-year-old daughter. In May of this year, the girl was introduced to a mobile game by a friend and secretly downloaded the game on her mother’s phone, linking it to the bank account. When the family needed money, Mrs. La took the bank card with 139,345 CNY (approximately 500 million VND) to withdraw money, only to find the ATM showed a balance of 1.84 CNY. When she questioned her daughter, she discovered that the money had vanished into the game her daughter played daily.
Immediately after discovering the situation, Mrs. La went to the bank to review the transaction details of the payment account from May 1 to May 24.
After she withdrew 30,000 CNY in cash from the card on May 11, the remaining 139,345 CNY seemed to disappear like “water from a valve” every day. The frequency of spending increased from 9 times a day to 50 times a day. The sad truth is that the daughter admitted to using the card to play games.
Worse, the 8-year-old girl also asked a friend to link her bank card to her account, and ultimately, this friend stole the card information and used it for in-game purchases.
This story serves as a lesson for adults to reflect on the need to be vigilant and guide children to play games healthily to avoid unfortunate incidents like this one.
“Young Master Thief” Steals 200 Million VND to Play Games and Gamble
A teenager named T, 12 years old, was temporarily detained for theft. During the initial investigation, this teenager stated he was short on money for gaming, so on the afternoon of May 21, he broke into a house in Rach Gia city to steal. The total value of the assets seized included many gold bars, jewelry (necklaces, rings, bracelets, earrings), 10 million VND in cash, 1,000 USD, and 500 Australian dollars. The total estimated value of the stolen property was around 200 million VND.
After stealing, this gamer took some gold and foreign currency from the stolen goods and sold them for over 16 million VND. He then used this money to gamble and lost it all.
On the morning of May 22, while he was on his way back to his lodging, he was apprehended by criminal investigators from the Rach Gia City Police, Kien Giang Province. Notably, this teenager had a 4-year history of “practicing” theft.
7-Year-Old Gamer Wastes Nearly 140 Million VND in Just One Day
7-year-old Mohamed Shugaa spent all of the 6,000 USD (about nearly 140 million VND) in just one day to purchase items to upgrade his Jurassic World account. The boy’s English father later had a tough time reclaiming the money from Apple, offering a quite convincing explanation that no adult would spend so much money on a children’s game, clearly it was an accident.
In the end, Apple refunded Mohamed’s father. After receiving the amount, this man stated that Apple needed to pay more attention to managing purchases, saying, “Apple should be more responsible. There should be more checks from parents and they should monitor the payments,” and this opinion is truly worth considering.
Son Spends Over 100 Million VND on Games, Father Blames Apple
Unlike the parents in the examples above, Doug Crosson immediately called the police upon discovering that his 13-year-old son (Cameron) had spent 4,500 USD (over 100 million VND) on various games such as: Nova 3, Gun Bros 2, Gun Builder, Infinity Blade, and Plants vs Zombies. Doug’s son stated that he did not foresee spending so much.
Not accepting the loss, Crosson blamed Apple: “I am the father of a 13-year-old studious, polite, and sensitive child, but he was deceived after downloading free children’s games on the iPod and iPad, and those who should be held accountable here are not my child.”
Perhaps, feeling both the financial loss and heartache over his son, the father deflected responsibility elsewhere like that.
We should see this as a valuable lesson in managing children with video games.