Parents beware! Scammers targeting children with smart watches

From April through May of this year, a number of parents reported to police in Jiangxi Province that their SIM cards had been disabled, while around the same time, the secondary cards in their children's ' smart watches, which linked to their parent's cards, had been lost.

The spate of recent cases in Ganzhou, Jiangxi, was covered in an investigative report on China Central Television early this month.

Smart watch cards, secondary cards linked solely to the primary cards of their parents, enable children to stay in touch with their parents by calling and texting them. With location sharing, parents can also get alerts when their children arrive home, or check where they are.

Upon investigation, police suspected foul play, for one suspicious telephone number had dialed all the phone numbers that reported lost SIM cards.

Further investigation uncovered a fraud ring involving five suspects, with two now in criminal detention, as the case is being investigated further.

The criminal suspects began to target children as they needed access to SIM cards for their scams, but since September 1, 2015, all those wanting to purchase SIM cards needed to register their identification by showing their ID cards.

Since it was difficult to get the SIM cards from adults, the scammers set their sights on children with smart watches.

A victim surnamed Li reported being approached by two young men riding electric bikes who asked if they could make a phone call using Li's smart watch. The child obliged, and the two young people quickly left after making a call, and a few minutes later when Li went to check the time, his watch no longer worked.

In another case, a suspect, also on an e-bike, similarly approached a primary pupil and, after setting the child's mind at ease with some casual chat, asked to make a phone call using the child's smart watch. He returned the watch to the victim minus its card, and quickly left.

One suspect revealed that they would usually target children who appeared under the age of 11, and those who walked to school alone. In a good day, they could manage to trick the children out of two to four cards.

Once in possession of the cards, the fraudsters would proceed with telecom frauds by using GOIP or VOIP whereby nearly 100 SIM cards could be operated simultaneously, calling or texting the victims by using any number they wanted.

The scams could be highly deceptive, for although the scammers were calling from overseas, the numbers displayed on the victims' phones were domestic.

Given this new scam, police have issued a number of cautions to parents. Children should not lend their mobile phones or smart watches to strangers when are not in the company of their parents or the teachers.

Secondly, in the case of SIM cards being stolen, the victims should report the theft to their mobile phone operators to have the stolen cards disabled, and also report the case to the police, without delay.

As the cards from smart watches are pegged to those of a parent, when the child's card is lost, and the loss identified as suspicious by the mobile phone operator, the parent's card in question would be disabled.

The police also suggested that parents teach their children to be wary of strangers, or information from strangers. Similarly, parents should also guard jealously such vital information as their bank accounts and passwords.