Editor's note: The following article was translated and edited from a classic "scam story" that's been circulating the Chinese blogs and forums for the past several years. According to the writer of the original post, he fell victim to a phone scam in which several days after helping what he presumed to be an innocent-looking young woman in a time of need, he was shocked to discover that the contact information and address book information on his phone had been stolen and used to con friends and family into wiring "him" money. While some have questioned the authenticity of the story, it remains nonetheless a valuable allegory to the potential dangers of being a "Good Samaritan" in China.

Earlier this year, my wife and I went out to Jinbaoshan to pay our respects for Tomb Sweeping Day (April 4th). After we were done there, as it was still rather early yet, we decided to head over to a nearby department store to shop for some new summer clothes. After wandering around for a while, my wife went off to use the restroom. While I was waiting for her outside, a very attractive young woman ran over to me with tears in her eyes asking for help—a request that, especially given her beauty, most men would find hard to refuse.

She said to me: "Sir, can you help me? My purse was just stolen and my phone was inside it. May I use your cell phone to call the police?" More than a little flustered by what was happening, I didn't even have a response for her, and simply handed her my phone. I watched as she dialed 110 and listened in as she started talking to the police dispatcher, filing a report for her stolen purse. Suffice it to say, the situation felt normal to me—perhaps my judgment was bit clouded by thoughts that I was doing the right thing for a person in need; being a Good Samaritan—so I wasn't the least bit wary of letting her use my phone.

Midway through her conversation, the connection got fuzzy, and she walked a few meters away from me, trying to find a better signal. After the connection dropped, and with her back to me, she redialed the number. As she was still within my line of sight and I could hear the conversation, I remained calm and thought nothing of it. After all, why should I be suspicious of such a pretty young woman who'd just had her bag stolen? After talking to the police for another few minutes, she gave the phone back to me and said: "Sir, thank you so much, the police are on their way here. You're a really good person." Phone in hand, I responded: "It's nothing, I'm glad that I could help!" Soon after she left, my wife came out of the bathroom, we continued wandering around the department store and I forgot all about my "good deed".

No good deed goes unpunished

Two days later, my wife and I both started receiving strange calls and text messages. First, my wife called me up, obviously upset, and told me that her sister had just called her: "What the hell is wrong with your husband? He goes and gets arrested in Dalian in a prostitution sting…and now he has the nerve to ask me for bail money!" Moments later, a subordinate from my office called: "Mr. Hu, the funds have been transferred to your account. I only had access to 30,000 RMB, I hope it's enough to help!" Over the course of a single day, my wife and I received more than 100 phone calls from friends and family saying similar things. Late into the evening, the phone calls finally stopped, giving us time to sit down and assess the situation. After talking over the facts, we quickly concluded that someone must have used my phone number to contact all of the people, posing as me and saying something along the lines of: "Help! I'm in trouble. I was arrested in Dalian and I need 50,000 RMB for bail...I don't have enough cash on me, and I can't call my family for obvious reasons. Please, you're the only one who can help me."

Instinctively, the next thing I tried to do was confront the person who had stolen my identity and ruined my reputation. Using the phone number my friend told me he thought was "me", I attempted to contact this person, but the line was constantly busy and my text messages went unanswered. My head was spinning. How was it possible for someone to know the names and phone numbers of so many of my friends? Did my cell phone have some sort of computer virus on it? Did someone steal my phone number?

Making sense of a senseless situation

The next day, I continued receiving calls and text messages from a lot of very confused people. At this point, this was something that I'd unfortunately become somewhat used to. It wasn't until the boss of my company called me did I truly realize just how much trouble I was in. As ridiculous as it may sound, after getting off the phone with him, thoughts of suicide crossed my mind. I really didn't think I had the courage to keep dealing with the situation—and I didn't even do anything wrong! But it didn't really matter: I worked for a state-owned enterprise, where if it becomes known that "you were arrested in a prostitution sting"…good luck ever finding another job.

Not knowing where else to turn, I decided to contact a police officer friend of mine. I paid a visit to his office, and told him the whole story from start to finish, including the parts about my "good deed" a few days earlier, although truth be told, I didn't really expected him to be of much help with such a strange situation. Was I ever wrong: "Oh man, they got you too?" my friend said, "This new cellphone scam that's been going around is just awful. Actually, I too received a ‘distress' message from ‘you' this morning, although something about it seemed a bit strange to me. I was going to give you a call later tonight to see what was going on, but it looks like you beat me to it."

According to my friend, after that year's Spring Festival, police started receiving lots of reports similar to mine, although at that time, most of the victims were foreigners. Until I showed up at his office, my friend had never heard of this scam happening to a Chinese person. My friend is quite a talker, and though he's very professional, he had no reservations telling me everything the police knew about this new scam:

1) The scammer is usually a young woman or an elderly person who asks to use your phone for some important reason. Once they get ahold of it and are temporarily out of view, they plug a small device in to your phone that essentially copies over your contact information and address book your phone and SIM card in a matter of seconds (theoretically it can be done via Bluetooth as well). Once they are done "talking" to the person on the other end of the line, they hide the small device, which now has your information on it, and give you the phone back. Because the device plugs directly in to the phone and no outgoing calls are made, the process is virtually untraceable. Thus, in the blink of an eye, you've gone from Good Samaritan to victim of identity theft.

2) The scammer then sends your information to someone who specializes in fraud and uses it to send a fake story to people in your address book to get them to send money to help "you". The story is usually something along the lines of:  "Help! I'm in jail in this foreign place. I need money, please hurry!" The victim is almost always a man.

3) After they receive a sum of money, the scammers will stop using your phone number and move on to the next victim (so as not to attract unnecessary attention). Upon hearing this, and after recovering from a brief freak out, I sent a mass text message to everyone in my address book, telling them what had happened and advising them not to respond or send money, regardless of what kind of huge problem "I" claimed to be in. A few days later, once things had settled down a bit, I was able to more accurately assess the damage that had been done. In total, nine of my contacts had fallen for the scam: two cousins, two former classmates, one customer and four subordinates. They were cheated out of a total of 367,000 RMB.

4) Although the police are doing everything they can to catch these phone scammers, the nature of the con leaves little to no evidence, and the most skilled scammers can very easily cover their tracks.

A word of warning

After leaving the police station, I told myself that if the scammers were not caught in the next few days, I'd have no choice but to repay my friends and family out of my own pocket. Financial burden or not, this loss of money wasn't the thing that troubled me the most about this situation. For me, the most damaging effect of this scam was that I lost a huge amount of face—all of my friends, family and even my coworkers and bosses thought (if only temporarily) that I'd been arrested in Dalian in a prostitution sting; only later learning the slightly better truth that I'd just unwillingly scammed them out of a large sum of money…

So, as much as it pains me to say this, I must advise that all of you go against your Good Samaritan impulses and never, regardless of circumstance, ever let a stranger use your cellphone.

Source: 5i01.cn
 

Related links
Customer Complaint Reveals Common Karaoke Bar Scam in China
China Bar Scam: Hot Girls, Fake Wine and Big Bucks
How To: Avoid Employment Scams in China

Warning：The use of any news and articles published on eChinacities.com without written permission from eChinacities.com constitutes copyright infringement, and legal action can be taken.

Keywords: China phone scam China Good Samaritan problem China identity theft