Scam group employees: one-on-one chat has a special book [Internet fortune telling scam: the online platform "fortune master" has millions of fans and ordinary consultation starts from two or three hundred]

Recently, a "fortune teller" Internet celebrity in Anhui Province was arrested for illegally making more than 3 million yuan in 200 years. Fortune-telling scams are not new to catch up on the Internet model, and victims are often deceived by credulous lies. A reporter from Beijing Youth Daily investigated several routines of Internet fortune-telling scams.

Fortune-telling Internet celebrities have made a profit of more than 3 million yuan in 200 years

Recently, during an online inspection, the police of the Internet Security Brigade of the Yingzhou Branch of the Fuyang City Public Security Bureau in Anhui Province found that netizens in the jurisdiction "Yihe Kuange" posted videos suspected of spreading feudal superstitious activities on social platforms.

On April 4, the police squatted and waited to successfully capture Liu Mouzhu, "Brother Yihe Kuan". After investigation, it was found that around 14, Liu Mouzhu began to help customers see fortunes, marriage, exorcism, medical treatment, and overdo to deceased relatives through social platforms, and gradually became famous on the Internet, currently having 2020,3 fans.

It is reported that Liu Mouzhu has made at least 300 yuan per trigram, and has made an illegal profit of more than 200 million yuan. When the police asked Liu Mouzhu if he calculated that he would be arrested, Liu Mouzhu said: "Fortune telling is all fraudulent, mainly relying on figuring out the psychology of customers, and watching orders according to customer needs." If the fortune teller is accurate, he will not be caught. ”

Some fortune gurus have millions of followers

A reporter from Beijing Youth Daily searched for "eight characters", "fortune-telling", "divination" and other information on multiple online social platforms, and found that there were many bloggers with "fortune" and "numerology" as their signatures, with fans ranging from tens of thousands to millions, all claiming to be "marriage, financial luck, health, career, studies, children... All of them are fine".

The Beiqing News reporter contacted multiple accounts as a "helper", and was directed to instant messaging software such as WeChat and QQ. The other party generally said that "the account is customer service, you need to pay first, and then predict". In several accounts, you can choose any one of the marriage, career, studies and other items, and the general "consulting" price starts from two or three hundred yuan, such as "consulting" multiple projects, and will increase the money as appropriate.

The Beiqing News reporter found that there were multiple different millions of fan accounts, all of which eventually "drained" to the same WeChat account.

More than 20 people operated the "Mage" account to commit fraud

Ms. Zhang, 45, said that around 2017, she and her family were "unlucky", and in 2018, she and her friends complained and heard that they were introduced to a "mage". Ms. Zhang found the "mage" named "Billions of Feng Shui", and after contacting through WeChat, the "mage" said that he could do it, so she first counted the eight characters for Ms. Zhang. Ms. Zhang said that she transferred a total of 2887,<> yuan to the other party through WeChat. She said that every time the other party talked about the practice, he would use secret methods, secret recipes, writing heavenly books, chanting mantras and other reasons to ask for online transfer and payment.

There are dozens of people who have similar experiences to Ms. Zhang. In 2020, more than 20 criminal suspects of "Billions of Feng Shui" were sent to court for trial, and the two main criminals were sentenced to five years in prison by the Puyang Court in Henan Province for committing fraud, fined <>,<> yuan, and returned all illegal gains.

The Beiqing News reporter found the verdict of the "Billions of Feng Shui" case through the China Judgment Document Network.

According to Chu's confession, in October 2017, when he searched for money-making projects on the website, he saw an advertisement for feng shui and fortune telling. Chu felt that it was a business opportunity, so he contacted the people on the advertisement, and after going back and forth, Chu understood that this was the "business" of using people's superstitious psychology to carry out online fraud.

Faced with the temptation of interests, Chu hit it off with the other party, and soon discussed the cooperation and sharing model, and began to prepare for the fraud. Because he didn't want to show his face directly, Chu also asked Zheng, a distant relative who had been a micro-merchant before, to help. Zheng rented houses in different locations in Puyang as fraud venues in the name of opening a company, and recruited more than 20 people to set up various departments of the fraud group to operate and operate the "master" account to attract fans to be deceived.

Former employees: We all have a script

Wang, who was one of the employees of the Billion Feng Shui scam group, said he came to Billion Feng Shui in 2017 through a friend's introduction. Wang said that the company has four chat groups: "Billions of Feng Shui", "Explosive Single Group", "Docking Group" and "Approval Group", which are used for work communication, "attracting fans", docking customer data and reporting after the end of the scam.

Wang said that he does not know how to tell fortunes at all, in order to increase the sense of realism, the employees' WeChat avatars are uniformly set in black and white gossip patterns, after receiving customers attracted by the data promotion department, department members all fictionalize themselves as the so-called "Yuan Zhenzi" of Sichuan Qingcheng Mountain, chatting with customers.

"We pretend to be feng shui masters, all one-on-one chat with customers alone, and the ultimate goal is to let customers measure eight characters, practice things, and exceed it." He said that each business has a different price, and most customers transfer money to employees' WeChat, who then transfer the money to the financial account. "Measuring eight characters, doing things, and super things, is not really done, but continues to chat with customers according to the content of the words, sends some videos of the customer to do things, and finally tells the customer that everything is done for them, and the customer believes it."

Wang said that every time he sent the words that seemed to be fortune-telling results to the other party, he would suffix it with "remember not to send the results to others, otherwise it would affect the fortunes", in fact, to prevent someone from discovering that the results were similar. He said that his and other employees' salaries and commissions were taken proportionately from the money fraudulent.

Free divination is "consumed" with rhythm

Netizen Ms. Su shared her experience of being deceived by credulous online fortune telling. She said that she recently became obsessed with "tarot card divination", and through the Douyin platform, she followed a "tarot master". Ms. Su said that the divination direction she asked was mainly emotional and career, and the other party responded to the long article by saying, "Your emotional road is not smooth", "There is a certain ambition in your career", "But when you are young, your career is mediocre, you have to accumulate thick and thin".

Ms. Su said that she did not contact the "tarot master" again, and a few days later, the "tarot master" took the initiative to release a message, saying that Ms. Su's previous consultation made her the third "lucky person" in the company, as long as she buys the product, she can "win 3% of the lottery" and "discount if the product does not like it".

Ms. Su said that she spent 299 to buy a pair of shoes, and if she really won the first prize (1 iPhone), she could discount 8888 yuan. The other party told Ms. Su that she could deliver 499 yuan to choose to ship, or she could choose to discount and buy another thing. Ms. Su recalled that she was led by the other party to the rhythm at that time, and bought a foundation worth 360 yuan and drew a fourth prize of 6666 yuan.

"The other party said that there was a risk when giving me cashback, so I had to review my bank account." Ms. Su said she was joined by the other party in a video conference, shared the screen, asked to review WeChat, Alipay, online banking apps, and let herself transfer back and forth between these bank cards, and finally transferred all the money to one card. At this time, Ms. Su realized that she might be deceived, so she immediately hung up the sharing screen and asked for a refund, but was blocked by the other party.

Text/Reporter Wang Haoxiong

Coordinator/Jiang Shuo

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Traditional criminal networking Beware of falling into the trap

Wei Jingjing, captain of the criminal investigation detachment of the Beijing Daxing Public Security Bureau, told the Beiqing News reporter that online fortune-telling fraud is not a new type of online telecommunications fraud, but only a network of traditional crimes.

In traditional fortune-telling fraud, the probability of "calculating" may be less than 20%, but as long as there is "calculating", the news will spread geometrically.

The police said that there is also a group of criminals, using "fortune telling" as a pretext, using speech to gain the trust of victims, and on the basis of trust, using online telecommunications fraud methods such as rebates, pre-price reductions, and winning lottery free orders to deceive. "Because I gained trust at the beginning, no matter how absurd and flawed the words that followed, it was easy to seduce the victim." The police said that for these scams, everyone must be extra vigilant when surfing the Internet, carefully distinguish, and be careful of falling into traps.