Starting from the Internet fortune-telling scam： the consultation fee starts at two or three hundred, and one-on-one chat has a script.
Recently, online celebrity, an Anhui fortune teller, was arrested for making illegal profits of more than 2 million yuan in three years. It is nothing new for fortune-telling scams to catch up with the internet model, and victims are often deceived because they believe in lies. The Beijing Youth Daily reporter investigated several routines of the Internet fortune-telling scam.
Fortune-telling online celebrity earned more than 2 million yuan in three years.
Recently, during an online inspection by the police of Netan Brigade of Yingzhou Branch of Fuyang Public Security Bureau, Anhui Province, it was found that the netizen "Yihe Kuange" in the jurisdiction posted a video suspected of spreading feudal superstition activities on social platforms.
On April 14, the police waited for the successful capture of "Yihe Kuange" Liu Mouzhu. According to the investigation, around 2020, Liu Mouzhu began to help customers see fortune, marriage, exorcism, seeing a doctor, crossing over their deceased relatives, etc. through social platforms, and gradually became famous on the Internet, with 38,000 fans at present.
It is reported that Liu Mouzhu has at least 300 yuan for each divination, and has made an illegal profit of more than 2 million yuan. When the police asked Liu Mouzhu whether he would be arrested, Liu Mouzhu said: "Fortune telling is deceptive, mainly relying on trying to figure out the customer’s psychology and looking at the dishes according to the customer’s needs. If the fortune-telling is accurate, I won’t be caught. "
Some fortune tellers have millions of fans.
Beijing Youth Daily reporters searched for information such as "eight characters", "fortune telling" and "divination" on several social networking platforms, and found that there were many bloggers who signed "fortune" and "numerology", and the number of fans ranged from tens of thousands to millions, all of whom were called "marriage, wealth, health, career, study, children … … All of them are fine. "
The reporters of Beiqing Daily contacted several accounts as "helpers" and were all directed to instant messaging software such as WeChat and QQ. The other party generally said that "this account is customer service, so you need to pay first and then predict". In several accounts, you can choose one of the items such as marriage, career and study. The general "consultation" price starts from 200 yuan to 300 yuan. If you consult multiple items, you will increase the money as appropriate.
The reporter of Beiqing Daily found that there were many different millions of fan accounts, and all of them eventually "drained" to the same WeChat account.
More than 20 people operate the "Master" account to cheat.
Ms. Zhang is 45 years old. She said that around 2017, she and her family were "unlucky". In 2018, she complained with her friends and listened to the introduction of a "mage". Ms. Zhang found the "mage" named "Billion Feng Shui". After contacting through WeChat, the "mage" said that she could do it, so she counted the eight characters for Ms. Zhang first. Ms. Zhang said that she transferred a total of 2,887 yuan to the other party through WeChat. She said that every time the other party talked about the practice, they would use secret methods, life formulas, writing gobbledygook, chanting mantras and other reasons to ask for online transfer of money.
There are dozens of people who have similar experiences with Ms. Zhang. In 2020, more than 20 suspects of "Billion Geomantic omen" were sent to court for trial. The two principal criminals were sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, fined 30,000 yuan and returned all illegal gains for committing fraud.
The reporter of Beiqing Daily found the verdict of the case of "Hundreds of Million Feng Shui" through China Judgment Document Network.
According to Zou’s confession, in October 2017, when he searched for money-making projects on the webpage, he saw an advertisement for feng shui and fortune telling. When Chumou thought it was a business opportunity, he contacted the people in the advertisement. After a long time, Chumou understood that this is the "business" of using people’s superstitious psychology to conduct online fraud.
In the face of the temptation of interests, Chumou hit it off with the other party, and soon discussed the cooperation and sharing model, and began to prepare for fraud. Because he didn’t want to show his face directly, Chu also asked Zheng, a distant relative who had worked in Wechat business before, for help. In the name of starting a company, Zheng rented houses in different locations in Puyang as fraud venues, recruited more than 20 people, set up various departments of the fraud group, and operated the "master" account to attract fans to be fooled.
Former employees: We all have scripts.
Wang was once one of the employees of the "Billion Feng Shui" fraud group. He said that in 2017, he came to "Billion Feng Shui" through a friend’s introduction. Wang said that the company has four chat groups, namely "Billion Feng Shui", "Explosive Group", "Docking Group" and "Reply Group", which are used for work exchange, "powder sucking", docking customer data and reporting after the fraud.
Wang said that he can’t tell fortune at all. In order to increase the sense of reality, the employees’ micro-signal avatars are all set in black and white gossip patterns. After receiving the customers attracted by the data promotion department, the members of the department fictional themselves as the so-called "Yuan Zhenzi" of Qingcheng Mountain in Sichuan, chatting with customers.
"We pretend to be Feng Shui masters, and we all chat with customers one by one. The ultimate goal is to let customers test their horoscopes, do things, cross over, etc." He said that each business has a different price, and most customers transfer money to employees’ WeChat, and employees then transfer money to financial accounts. "The thing of measuring eight characters, doing things and crossing over is not really done, but continuing to chat with customers according to the content of words, sending customers some videos of doing things, and finally telling customers that everything has been done for them, and customers will believe it."
Wang said that every time the words that look like fortune-telling results are sent to the other party, they will be suffixed with "Remember not to send the results to others, otherwise it will affect the fortune". In fact, it is to prevent someone from discovering that the results are the same. He said that the wages and commissions of himself and other employees were drawn from the money cheated in proportion.
Free divination is followed by rhythmic "consumption"
Ms. Su, a netizen, shared her credulous experience of being cheated by online fortune telling on the Internet. She said that she had recently become fascinated with "Tarot divination", and through the Tik Tok platform, she paid attention to a "Tarot Master". Ms. Su said that the direction of divination she asked was mainly emotional and career. The other party responded to the long article by saying that "your emotional path is not smooth", "you have certain ambitions in your career" and "your career is mediocre when you are young, so you should accumulate a lot of money".
Ms. Su said that she didn’t contact the Tarot Master again. A few days later, the Tarot Master took the initiative to announce that Ms. Su’s previous consultation made her the third "lucky" in the company. As long as she bought the product, she could "win 100%" and "if the product didn’t like it, she could get a discount".
Ms. Su said that she bought a pair of shoes for 299 yuan, and really won the first prize (an Apple mobile phone), which can be discounted to 8888 yuan. The other party told Ms. Su that she could pay 499 yuan to choose delivery, or she could choose to buy another thing at a discount. Ms. Su recalled that she was led by the other party at that time, and bought a foundation worth 360 yuan, and won the fourth prize of 6666 yuan.
"The other party said that there was a risk of prompting when giving me cash back, so I had to review my bank account." Ms. Su said that she was joined in a video conference by the other party, shared the screen, asked to review WeChat, Alipay and online banking apps, and let herself transfer money back and forth between these bank cards, and finally transferred all the money to one card. At this point, Ms. Su realized that she might be cheated, so she immediately hung up the sharing screen and asked for a refund, and the result was blacked out by the other party.
Text/reporter Wang Haoxiong
Coordinator/Jiang Shuo
remind
Traditional crime network carefully falls into the trap.
Wei Jingjing, the squadron leader of the Criminal Investigation Detachment of Beijing Daxing Public Security Bureau, told Beiqing Daily that online fortune-telling fraud is not a new type of online telecom fraud, but a network of traditional crimes.
The police said that marriage, exams, having boys and girls, etc. are a probability problem. In traditional fortune-telling fraud, the probability of "calculating" may be less than 20%, but as long as there is "calculating", the news will spread like wildfire and spread geometrically.
The police said that there are still a group of criminals who use "divination and fortune telling" as a cover to gain the trust of the victims. On the basis of trust, they use online telecom fraud means such as swiping rebates, pre-reducing prices, and winning free tickets to cheat. "Because the trust was gained at the beginning, the subsequent words, no matter how absurd and full of loopholes, are easy to confuse the victims." The police said that for these scams, everyone must be extra vigilant when surfing the Internet, carefully distinguish and be careful to fall into the trap.