CHINA: A Chinese woman has been detained after orchestrating a sophisticated scam to defraud a man she met on a wedding planning website.
The case, which shocked many, was uncovered after the man discovered that the woman he believed he was in a serious relationship with had been impersonating herself and her family using hired actors.
According to the South China Morning Post, the story began in August 2022 when Xin, a man from Hubei province, was contacted by a woman named Xiaoyu.
She had seen his contact details in a wedding planning advertisement and reached out to him. Despite living in Jiangsu province, Xiaoyu quickly professed her love for Xin just a month after they began communicating online.
As their relationship progressed, Xiaoyu convinced Xin that he needed to pay a bride price of 188,000 yuan (approximately US$26,000) to her family, citing local customs.
In January of the following year, Xin visited her family with a 10,000-yuan gift, but Xiaoyu claimed she was too ill to meet him.
Over the next year, Xiaoyu repeatedly asked Xin for more money, citing various financial needs, such as her mother’s surgery and gifts for her sister.
All the while, she avoided meeting him in person, claiming it was “inconvenient.”
To keep Xin reassured, she sent photos and spoke to him regularly on the phone, which helped assuage his growing suspicions. In total, Xin transferred over 220,000 yuan to Xiaoyu during this time.
In April, after months of online communication, Xiaoyu finally agreed to meet Xin and bring her parents and sister along.
However, Xin noticed that Xiaoyu looked different from the pictures she had sent him, to which she explained that the photos had been “beautified.”
The following month, Xin’s family met with Xiaoyu’s, during which he transferred additional funds and bought new clothes for her family worth 40,000 yuan.
Yet, Xin’s suspicions grew when he accidentally discovered messages on Xiaoyu’s phone, where she complained about him “constantly asking to meet” and promised to “act according to the script.”
Confronted with the evidence, Xiaoyu claimed that someone else had used her account. But things took a more sinister turn when Xin’s suspicions were confirmed.
The next day, Xiaoyu’s sister, Xiaomiao, met Xin in person and urged him to break up with Xiaoyu, claiming she was “depressed.”
Determined to get to the truth, Xin traveled to Xiaoyu’s city, where he was stunned to realize that Xiaomiao, not Xiaoyu, was the woman he had been dating for the past two years.
The woman he had fallen in love with was, in fact, married, unemployed, and a mother. Xiaoyu had used hired actors to impersonate herself and her family, all while continuing to extract money from Xin to support her child.
The photos Xiaoyu had sent were not of her but were instead images of models she had found online. In total, she managed to defraud Xin of 480,000 yuan (approximately US$65,000) before being arrested by authorities in November.
The case has raised eyebrows and drawn widespread commentary. “Life is more dramatic than television dramas,” one observer remarked. Another added, “Love is so blind that he was deceived for two years in a scam riddled with loopholes.”
The woman, surnamed Zhou, now faces serious charges as the police continue their investigation into her actions.