The alert comes after similar statements made in 2023 by Australian and Chinese officials.
The FBI has alerted the public to a serious fraud occurring in the United States in which perpetrators force a victim to fake and record their own kidnapping in order to use the footage as leverage against the victim’s own family.
The warning comes after other similar statements from Australian and Chinese authorities in 2023, and it comes after the first known occurrence of this kind of “cyber kidnapping” in the United States.
Police in Riverdale City, Utah, reported on Sunday that they had found Chinese exchange student Kai Zhuang, 17, freezing in a tent atop a mountain. According to the police, con artists tricked him into withdrawing from society and defrauded his family of $80,000.
The FBI noted in its PSA that the scam typically starts with a fictitious call informing the victim that they are the subject of a Chinese law enforcement official’s investigation. The caller then persuades them to agree to ongoing audio and video surveillance in order to prove their innocence.
The FBI claims that victims are then told to “lie to friends and family to secure additional money, to serve as a money mule, or to facilitate similar criminal schemes against other Chinese students in the United States,” or they are told to wire money in an effort to further establish their innocence.
The FBI claims that victims are then told to “lie to friends and family to secure additional money, to serve as a money mule, or to facilitate similar criminal schemes against other Chinese students in the United States,” or they are told to wire money in an effort to further establish their innocence.
“Do not give out any financial or personally identifying information to an unknown person who contacts you and accuses you of a crime. Also, do not pay any money. The caution reads, “Cease any further contact with the individual.”
Although Zhuang’s account is the first well publicized example of the fraud in the United States, Australia has a longer history with it. Since at least 2020, Chinese students studying in New South Wales have been the target of scams, as evidenced by the victims’ grainy self-portraits in which they appear to be blindfolded and tied up. In Mandarin, police have even created a TikTok alerting people to the situation.
China’s Consulate in Adelaide announced in August that they had suffered terrible losses and trauma from multiple recent victims. The newest victim was tricked into leaving Australia to evade Australian police and travel to an unidentified third nation before realizing he had been duped, the Chinese Consulate in Melbourne said on Thursday.
Chinese embassies in Japan and the United Kingdom, as well as the Chinese consulate in Toronto, have all issued similar alerts.
The latest version of “cyber kidnapping” is based on a much more widespread con, which goes by the name of “grandkid scam.” In such scams, a criminal calls a victim pretending to be a loved one—possibly using a voice synthesized by artificial intelligence—and demands money right once, claiming to be in an emergency.
The FBI may find it challenging to apprehend online scammers since the perpetrators may conceal their identities or reside in nations over which US jurisdiction does not extend.
Virtually every year, Americans lose more money to internet scammers; according to the FBI last year, victims reported losing a record $10.2 billion in 2022. However, Chinese citizens are also frequently targeted. “Pig butchering,” the most financially disastrous fraud that preys on individual Americans, was first observed in China before spreading to the United States.
