The 10-year-old was duped into getting his grandfather involved by the online scammers. Photo: Shutterstock
After scanning the code, Xiaoyu received an error message saying that the WeChat account, along with all the money saved in the WeChat wallet, would be frozen unless he took measures within an hour.
He was then asked to add a person on the messaging platform QQ to get instructions about the “measures”.
Xiaoyu said the person asked him to download Tencent Meeting, the Chinese version of VooV meeting app, so that he could share his phone screen with the person for “better instructions”.
The scammers then instructed Xiaoyu to download the UnionPay app, a unified mobile payment app of China’s banking industry, and ask his grandfather to log in to check which card under his name had money.
They then asked Xiaoyu to scan a series of QR codes to “unfreeze the WeChat account”, and by scanning the codes, Xiaoyu unknowingly made three money transfers to them.
“My 20,000 yuan disappeared by me just nodding my head, blinking and opening my mouth,” said Xiaoyu’s grandfather, surnamed Liu, describing the facial recognition procedures required by the app.
He added that it had taken him 10 years to save up the money.
On mainland social media the case rekindled concerns over child mobile phone addiction and game scams.
China had an estimated 191 million internet users aged between six and 18 in 2021, 96.8 per cent of the country’s population for the age group, according to a report jointly conducted by the China Internet Network Information Centre and the Chinese Communist Youth League.
Some 19.5 per cent of the underage mobile users surveyed said they were psychologically dependent on the internet very much or moderately.
