30 arrested for US$1.5m fraud targeting foreigners

More than 30 people implicated in a 10 million yuan (US$1.5 million) fraud have been arrested, prosecutors in Songjiang District said.

The alleged ringleaders, surnamed Ni and Wu, are accused of opening a fake futures trading platform called BNP in 2017 and cheating mostly overseas investors out of 10 million yuan.

Prosecutors said the female ring members masquerading as young rich women targeted successful foreign businessmen via social networking platforms such as WeChat and WhatsApp.

The women then introduced the men to “successful Wall Street futures traders,” which were in fact their colleagues, who persuaded the men to invest through the BNP platform. 

However, the money went into the pockets of Ni and Wu, prosecutors said.

The women, aged below 25 and from uneducated backgrounds, used free online translation services to communicate with the victims. They talked at length about the global financial situation, sometimes reciting financial reports to convince the men.

The scam came to light in March this year when one of the victims, surnamed Liu, called police to report he had been cheated out of 200,000 yuan in two months.

Police used information provided by him to track down Ni, Wu and other staff members.