By South China Morning Post | Created at 2025-01-20 10:16:45 | Updated at 2025-01-20 13:10:32
3 hours ago
An online influencer in China with 42,000 followers has scammed 560,000 yuan (US$76,000) out of a lonely elderly woman by making up moving stories and pretending to be her son.
A Shanghai woman in her 70s, surnamed Tang, was unmarried and childless. In 2022, her niece found she had been constantly transferring money to a stranger.
The man from northwestern China’s Shaanxi province claimed to be dedicated to resolving people’s problems, helping peasants sell slow-selling products and helping lost people find their homes.
Tang’s niece, surnamed Jiang, said she was attracted to the man’s “kindness”.
She initially sent small gifts in his live-streams in 2021, and was later tricked to buy illegitimate health products.
The man, who used the handle @lixuan and is now banned on the platform, then added Tang’s personal contact, and began calling her “mum”.
