A woman in Australia who lost more than a million in an elaborate scam eerily came face to face with one of the criminals while on holiday in China with her husband. The woman, who did not want to reveal her identity, runs a Chinese immigration and education company. Speak with news.com.aushe said she was distraught when she learned that scammers had kept her hooked for almost a year through a fake online trading platform before finally cutting ties with her after emptying her bank account.
It all started when the woman received a text message from a man named Wei Chen, asking how she was doing. She initially asked the man who he was, but she did not find the message alarming or strange since she runs a Chinese immigration and education company. “I thought my friends or clients introduced him to me,” she told the outlet.
Later the two got along well. They messaged each other via WeChat and WhatsApp about food and how they had both moved to Australia. Chen told her he was a permanent resident who ran a furniture store and that he lived in the expensive Sydney suburb in a house worth more than $12,000,000.
Ultimately, Chen said he bet his fortune on an investment trading website called SpreadEx. Notably, there exists a legitimate company by that name in the UK as a sports betting and financial trading company, regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
Chen convinced the woman to put some money into it. She had $191,215.50 in savings and over time she put all of that away and then some. The woman also revealed that she encouraged her friends to invest in the scheme and also borrowed money from them.
Unfortunately, the company she was dealing with was actually run by a group of scammers. In December last year – six months after the woman invested – Britain's financial watchdog warned that the scammers were adding an extra 's' and using the domain spreadexs.com instead of spreadx.com. The Australian government has also warned about the fraudulent site.
The woman had already invested all her savings on the platform. She even borrowed another $286,823.25 from friends and reborrowed the mortgage she shared with her husband. Some of her school friends also invested after she encouraged them.
The woman told the outlet that when she went on vacation to China, she wanted to continue investing in the platform. At that point, the scammers told her she could hand the money directly to them while she was in mainland China. She met a man in what she described as a “remote dark place” and handed him more than 500,000 yuan in cash.
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While abroad, the woman also left her SpreadEx trading account in the hands of Chen, whom she considered a mentor at the time. But when she came back, she tried to withdraw some of her money, but her trading account was suddenly suspended.
The scammers then told her she had to pay a risk fee for withdrawing cash. They also charged her a fine for letting someone else take over her account.
The woman said the last contact she had with Chen was in April, meaning he kept the ruse going for almost a year. After several failed attempts to contact him, Roxy and her husband concluded it was a scam and alerted police in September this year.
The woman said she still owes money she took from her friends and the mortgage. Victoria Police are still investigating the woman's case.