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Swindler cashes out money from online accounts
Shanghai Daily, November 11, 2013
In a new kind of telecom scam, a swindler siphoned off money from the online accounts of a customer who had placed an order for a coat on a popular e-commerce site, police said.
The victim, surnamed Cao, received a call after she confirmed an order at an online store on Tmall.com, an online retail website spun off from Taobao, for a trench coat on November 5. She said the caller, who claimed to be the store owner, knew her name and the order she placed as well as the order number.
The swindler told her that he had encountered network problems and therefore had to stop their transaction.
He apologized to her and wanted to offer a refund.
The swindler then sent her a link via QQ, an instant messaging tool, and asked her to type in her personal information, including her online account password, credit card number and password, ID card number and cell phone number.
But after she filled her information the web page went blank. She called the person, who told him to type in the information of another bank card. She went through the steps all over again but it still didn't work.
She suspected something was wrong and hung up the phone when the caller asked her to try a third bank card.
When Cao logged into her two online accounts later, she found all the money, 2,100 yuan (US$345) in all, missing.
She then tried to reach the caller again but couldn't get through. She contacted the store's real owner online only to be told there was nothing wrong with the site and no information was released to anybody.
Cao reported the scam to local police the same day.
Tmall.com said they had no idea how their customers' information had been leaked.
Police are investigating the latest online scam.
