The phenomenon of online scams has existed for a long time, and the media has long warned about it. However, with increasingly sophisticated tactics, social media users, gamers, or anyone can fall victim to these scams. Recently, a gamer in China was scammed out of 2 billion just for playing an online game and naively following the words of the scammers.
It is known that this gamer, whose surname is Xu, has a master’s degree and lives in the city of Yinhang, China. During the complicated Covid-19 pandemic in the country, like many others, gamer Xu stayed home, relieving stress by playing games and chatting on social media. All the bad luck started from here.
A stranger befriended this gamer and then invited Xu to play an online game that could even yield money. Despite having a master’s degree, gamer Xu still believed the stranger and downloaded the app, registered an account, and then invested 500 Yuan (CNY – equivalent to 1.6 million VND) to bet in the game.
After 30 minutes, Xu earned an additional 100 CNY (about 300,000 VND), from which this game gained complete trust of this gamer as well as the scammer, and considered the latter as a close friend for helping him earn money easily. The next day, Xu deposited another 9,500 CNY, when the total earnings reached 1,800 CNY (about 60 million VND), he even withdrew cash from this game. Excited, Xu ended up investing a total of 500,000 CNY (around 1.6 billion VND).
At this point, Xu panicked because he couldn’t withdraw his money. Panicking, he reported to the police, but only received a head shake and a warning not to deposit any more money into this game and to let the responsible authorities handle the case. However, not heeding the warning, Xu was determined to recover all the money he had lost, so he reopened the game, and immediately his “friend” contacted him, stating that if he deposited an additional 188,888 CNY (about 623 million VND), he would be able to withdraw all the money.
Clinging to a glimmer of hope, this gamer invested an additional 130,000 CNY (400 million VND) – his last funds – into the game. The result was that this so-called “friend” disappeared forever, blocking all messages from this master’s graduate. Currently, the Chinese police are investigating this case, and it is highly likely that gamer Xu will lose this money permanently, or who knows, he might have a chance to recover some of it, but that remains uncertain. It is only known that this is a costly lesson for all gamers and social media users: do not naively trust strangers in cyberspace, or else face a bitter ending like Xu in this story.