A cleaner was allegedly scammed by some fraudsters from China, losing his life savings of $330,000. The case is currently under police investigation.
Sixty-two-year-old Zhang Hancheng fell for the scam in November of last year, when he received a call from someone who claimed to be with the police in Shanghai.
The caller asked him to cooperate with investigations into a money-laundering operation, Shin Min Daily News reported on July 13 (Wednesday).
The cleaner had never visited Shanghai, and neither did he have a bank account there.
But the phone call left him distraught, which only increased a short while later when two letters came claiming to be from Chinese and Shanghai officials.
He, therefore, believed that an actual investigation was ongoing.
Mr Zhang was then told by the scammers to open a bank account and allow the officials to have access to it. This would then give them the opportunity to thoroughly investigate whether money was being laundered, they told the older man.
The officials also told him that they had bugged his phone, and warned him to tell no one about the bank account they instructed him to open.
At this time, when the scam began, Mr Zhang was still in quarantine due to Covid. Upon his release from quarantine, he transferred $60,000 into the new bank account.
He also gave the scammers a one-time password (OTP) he had been issued, again on their instructions.
On Dec 7, when he tried to withdraw money for himself, he discovered that the scammers had all but wiped him clean, having taken $330,000 which took him 50 years to save.
Only $49 was left in his account.
Several withdrawals were made from his account on Nov 15 and 23, and while he was informed of these via SMS, he did not understand the messages he was sent.
Mr Zhang’s older brother helped him file a police report on Dec 8, as well as appeal for part of the amount he lost to be reimbursed by the bank.
The brother told the bank that Mr Zhang usually only withdraws $200 per transaction, and asked why his account was not frozen when big amounts were withdrawn last November.
The bank has reportedly said, however, that it will not reimburse Mr Zhang for the money that the scammers took.
/TISG
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