China Shaanxi Tobacco Industry Company Donates Money To Help Impoverished Freshmen (Photo : Getty Images)
Scams abound in the online and offline world, whether it is a simple ruse such as inflated ticket prices to a celebrity’s fan meet to an elaborate one involving majority of an institution’s employees such as the recent Plant-a-Bullet scheme in Manila International Airport.
A recent victim of a phone scam in China is an 18-year-old girl from Linyi, Shandong Province, accepted to the Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications. On Sunday, Xu Yuyu had a cardiac arrest and died after she found out that she was swindled of her entire tuition fee, reported China Daily.
With her 568 points on the college entrance exam, the university admitted her. She got a phone call from the university on Aug. 18, which is why Xu’s family did not question when she received another phone call the next day from an unknown person. The call told Xu she would receive 2,600 yuan student funding, but she needs to wire 9,900 yuan as activation fee into the bank account of the caller.
When the university-bound freshman noticed the promised 2,600 yuan did not appear in her student account, Xu concluded she was the victim of a scam, devastating her too much that on the way home after she and her family reported what happened to the police, and she lost consciousness.
Doctors tried to revive Xu but failed. Although she was healthy prior to the scam, Xu was declared dead, saddened by the recent turn of events. Li Ziyun, Xu’s mother, blamed the scammer for killing her daughter who saved whatever little she had for her university education, only for it to be lost in an instant.
While Linyi Police is investigating the incident, they also warned incoming university students to be wary of phone scams which had an upsurge.
In the U.S., Seattletimes reported that up to 90 Chinese students enrolled at the University of Washington may have lost tuition money totaling $1 million. A scammer, also a Chinese student in the university, apparently offered them 5 percent cut on the $11,340 summer tuition, or $600, through the social media app WeChat.
The scam unraveled in July when a New York detective contacted the university about stolen credit card numbers used to pay summer tuition. The scammer had access to the student account because she asked for their university ID and password which the gullible students gave her.
