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Chinese in the crosshairs of ‘mushrooming’ transnational cybercrime
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A group of Chinese nationals arrested during a police raid on suspicion of running an online love scam syndicate in Batam, on Aug 29.
PHOTO: AFP
Qin Jianxing and Han Wei
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BEIJING – It was on May 25, 2023, an otherwise normal day, that Lin Ping received a shocking WeChat message from her 19-year-old son Xiaowei, saying he and a friend had been “tricked and sold to Myanmar”, pleading for her to seek help from the Chinese police.
In the frantic messages that followed, Xiaowei said he had been lured by the promise of a job transporting raw jade stones in Xishuangbanna in south-west China’s Yunnan province, Lin told Caixin.
