“Especially for Chinese students, here without any support from family, they get scared when they get information like this,” said Prof. Lennon Chang, a senior lecturer in criminal justice at Monash University who has studied the scam. “The talented criminals understand this psychological emotion and use it as a way to lead the students under the pass.”
The scammers use technology to bolster the fraud. Professor Chang said they usually mask where they call from, presenting a number from the Chinese Embassy that can be found online. In some cases, they ask the victim to send a photo, or alter what they find online to create an image or video that seems to show the person kidnapped.
The parents, far away, usually receive the ransom demand by phone and are then sent what appears to be evidence of a crime.
Worried about their children, perhaps after reading about actual kidnappings of Chinese students in Canada and in the United States, some parents in China comply. In one case from Sydney last month, a family paid 2 million Australian dollars ($1.4 million) to the unknown criminals. In the other cases, payments ranged from a few thousand dollars to more than $200,000.
“During this period of time, with the pandemic and with less human contact, the parents might not know who to contact if they get a message like that, or for the student, they might not be able to talk to people they trust to verify whether this kind of message is true,” Professor Chang said. “This kind of isolation might create some opportunity for criminals.”
When the police have been called, it has typically taken them only a few hours to uncover what had really happened. But the names of victims have been rarely publicized, and no masterminds have been identified.
On Tuesday, the Australian authorities reminded people to report anyone they suspected of pretending to be from the Chinese government.