Caterpillar fungus sob stories defraud lonely men
The gang has allegedly hired a women for photos and videos.
The gang's office is raided at the end of last month.
Thirty suspects have been detained for allegedly scamming people with stories of women escaping from arranged marriages, Shanghai police said on Tuesday.
Since December 2018, the gang has defrauded about 300 people out of over 800,000 yuan (US$120,000), police said.
Police in Changning District started to investigate the case in January.
Suspects, based in Xinyu City, Jiangxi Province, allegedly hooked up with WeChat. Pretending to be a woman living in Guangzhou who had been forced by her family from a backward village to marry four men, the suspects tried to sell caterpillar fungus at a high price to the victims, many of whom out of compassion for the non-existent woman donated a lot of money without asking for the goods, police said.
The scammers told victims that she needed money as ransom for the arranged marriage she was escaping from.
A man surnamed Li was one of the eight victims from Shanghai. He said he gave 30,000 yuan.
“I got the impression from her WeChat moments that she was a simple girl living a lonely, miserable life in Guangzhou,” he said.
Police said all of the victims were men from 30 to 50 years old, and very few of them had reported the case to the police.
The gang's office was raided by Shanghai police at the end of last month.
