The three companies that scammers most often claimed to be representing during the Singles’ Day week was an online bookstore and two Web sites selling electronics, the Criminal Investigation Bureau said on Sunday.
During the week of Nov. 9 to 15, the bureau received 26 reports of scammers posing as KingStone Bookstore representatives, 17 as representatives of the computer and mobile phone accessories Web site Adam Elements, and 12 posing as employees of 486shop.com, which sells home electronics.
There was a slight increase in the number of reported scams during the week, likely because scammers wanted to take advantage of Singles’ Day around Nov. 11, when many companies offer discounts, the bureau said.
The scammers all used similar tactics, it added.
They called people pretending to be a customer service employee from one of the companies and said that something had gone wrong with their order or membership status, it said.
To “resolve” the issue, the scammers instructed their victims to use an ATM or online banking system and input “special codes,” which in reality transferred money to the scammers.
Another way the fraudsters extracted money from their victims was to ask them to buy game currencies. The scammers would then ask for the electronic serial number to gain access to the currencies and sell them to other players for cash.
If their initial attempts to cheat people failed, the scammers would try to build credibility by following up with calls pretending to be from banks or the post office, which confirmed the supposed problem and the way to “solve” it, the bureau said.
Although scammers change their tactics from time to time, they always ask their targets to use ATMs and online banking systems or buy game currencies, so people should beware of such requests, it said.
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