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| Kidnapping illustrations |
SYDNEY--Australian police warned the Chinese authorities there was a surge in "virtual kidnapping". The target is to target students in the country.
"We've had a series of cases in recent months, where almost every weekend we had a victim to one of these scams," the director of the New South Wales State Crime Command, Darren Benett.
Benett said, to date there are eight virtual abduction cases reports. The total loss of the eight cases is about 2.3 million US dollars. In a press conference, Benett said, if there was a phone call saying that one of the relatives (students) had been kidnapped, then immediately contact the police and the university.
"If you get this call, close your phone, your police telephone and your university, don't pay the redeem," Benett says.
The perpetrator mode calls the victim by posing as a local Chinese official. The perpetrator warned that the victim or student had been involved in the crimes in China and had to pay a certain amount of money to avoid legal action, arrest or deportation.
Some perpetrators told the victim not to make contact with his family and friends. Perpetrators ask the victim to rent a hotel room and take pictures or videotape themselves in a bonded state as well as a closed eye.
The victim was asked to send the video or photograph to their relatives abroad to give confidence. "We need to take into account the cultural factors and the fact that the scam is done subtly," says state police officer Peter Thurtell.
New South Wales has 212 thousand foreign students enrolled. A number of Australian colleges have warned that they are at risk of losing billions of annual budgets due to Corona's viral pandemic.
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