Three in custody for defrauding students

Students were found to be targets of fraud in attempts to steal their money, Fengxian District procurators said on Friday.

In one case released by the procurators, a 10-year-old girl surnamed Lin was scammed out of more than 9,000 yuan (US$1,400) by a man surnamed Huang, 19, that she knew through a mobile game.

Lin doesn't have her own phone, so she always uses her mother's to play games and watch live broadcasts.

Huang used rhetoric to trick Lin into a WeChat group comprised of him and his partners to lure her into sending money in digital hongbao (red envelope).

Lin initially told him she didn't know how to send hongbao, so Huang taught her through a screenshot.

Before her mother found out, Lin had sent 9,201 yuan, according to the procurators.

After retrieving only 2,800 yuan, her mother called the police.

Three people, including Huang, were detained by the Fengxian District People's Peocuratorate in June, after they defrauded children under the age of 11 in Shanghai, Shandong, Shanxi and Hunan Provinces and other parts of the country in the same way.

The district's procurators have kept a close eye on telecom and Internet fraud on school campuses since last December.

A total of 13 people in 10 cases have been charged by the procurators during the past ten months.

Cases involving telecom and Internet fraud relating to students are divided into two kinds: One is where the suspect is a student at a school; the other is where the victim is a student at a school, procurators said.

Criminals use the characteristics of the Internet to screen subjects, and then arrange tailor-made traps for different students, procurators said.