673,000 yuan. Two Rolex watches. No particular model, no trying them on.
When this couple was leaving the store, a clerk spent two hours trying to talk them out of it, but couldn’t stop them. Later, police rushed into their home and found the two stuffing the watches into a shipping box, still insisting they hadn’t been scammed. It happened on the afternoon of September 7 at a watch shop on Danan Road in Lucheng, Wenzhou.
At around one that afternoon, a middle-aged couple headed straight for the counter. The clerk, Deng Shiqi, asked them three questions: Had someone online given them a price? Had someone they didn’t know sent them to buy the watches? Why did they want to buy them? At first, they said the watches were for family members, then changed their story and said they were for investment. Their phone had a picture of a Rolex saved on it, their budget was around 700,000 yuan, and the shop happened to have the watches in stock at just the right price.
My take is that, in this case, the watch was a remittance slip, not something to wear on your wrist. The hardest part of moving stolen money isn’t receiving it; it’s getting it out of the victim’s account without leaving a traceable trail. Buying a watch outsources the hardest part to the victim. Not caring which model they get shows they don’t intend to wear it. It holds its value, has a market price, and can be sold at any time—that’s exactly what the scammers want.
The Ministry of Public Security singled out this tactic in a press briefing. In its June 12 update, it said that one new development in telecom fraud was tricking victims into withdrawing cash or buying valuable items such as gold, mobile phones, or watches, then mailing them to a designated location or handing them to a designated person. The same briefing reported that ten common types of scams accounted for 85% of all telecom fraud cases. Of those, fake online investment scams caused the greatest losses, accounting for about 40%. One example cited at the briefing involved a victim in Zhejiang who was persuaded to “invest in physical gold” and was defrauded of several million yuan. The script used on the Wenzhou couple was almost identical; only the prop had changed.
The on-chain version skips even the questioning. Fake investment platforms tell victims to buy USDT and transfer it to a specified address, without anyone asking why. Buying a watch at least means another pair of eyes might notice; an on-chain transfer doesn’t even have that. The underlying trick has never changed: offer a small taste of success, then get the victim to send the money themselves. The prop may be gold, luxury watches, or stablecoins—the action is the same.
In the end, the watches were never sent. Police persuaded the couple to turn back, and the shop refunded the full amount. Recently, the Lucheng District Committee’s Peace and Safety Office, together with the anti-fraud center and the police station, awarded clerk Deng Shiqi and store manager Xin Jungao the title of “Lucheng Peace and Safety Guardians.” Not a single yuan of the 673,000 was lost.
The police report didn’t say exactly what rate of return the scammers had promised. I don’t know whether the couple got back in touch with them afterward, or whether the money was their savings or borrowed; that wasn’t mentioned either.
Just remember this image: someone wants to buy a watch but doesn’t care which one and won’t try it on, claims it’s an investment, yet is in a hurry to ship it out. If someone with no connection to you spends more than half an hour urging you not to send it, that person is the one on your side.
$BTC $USDT $USDC #反诈 #温州 #劳力士 #投资理财 #Binance Square
When this couple was leaving the store, a clerk spent two hours trying to talk them out of it, but couldn’t stop them. Later, police rushed into their home and found the two stuffing the watches into a shipping box, still insisting they hadn’t been scammed. It happened on the afternoon of September 7 at a watch shop on Danan Road in Lucheng, Wenzhou.
At around one that afternoon, a middle-aged couple headed straight for the counter. The clerk, Deng Shiqi, asked them three questions: Had someone online given them a price? Had someone they didn’t know sent them to buy the watches? Why did they want to buy them? At first, they said the watches were for family members, then changed their story and said they were for investment. Their phone had a picture of a Rolex saved on it, their budget was around 700,000 yuan, and the shop happened to have the watches in stock at just the right price.
My take is that, in this case, the watch was a remittance slip, not something to wear on your wrist. The hardest part of moving stolen money isn’t receiving it; it’s getting it out of the victim’s account without leaving a traceable trail. Buying a watch outsources the hardest part to the victim. Not caring which model they get shows they don’t intend to wear it. It holds its value, has a market price, and can be sold at any time—that’s exactly what the scammers want.
The Ministry of Public Security singled out this tactic in a press briefing. In its June 12 update, it said that one new development in telecom fraud was tricking victims into withdrawing cash or buying valuable items such as gold, mobile phones, or watches, then mailing them to a designated location or handing them to a designated person. The same briefing reported that ten common types of scams accounted for 85% of all telecom fraud cases. Of those, fake online investment scams caused the greatest losses, accounting for about 40%. One example cited at the briefing involved a victim in Zhejiang who was persuaded to “invest in physical gold” and was defrauded of several million yuan. The script used on the Wenzhou couple was almost identical; only the prop had changed.
The on-chain version skips even the questioning. Fake investment platforms tell victims to buy USDT and transfer it to a specified address, without anyone asking why. Buying a watch at least means another pair of eyes might notice; an on-chain transfer doesn’t even have that. The underlying trick has never changed: offer a small taste of success, then get the victim to send the money themselves. The prop may be gold, luxury watches, or stablecoins—the action is the same.
In the end, the watches were never sent. Police persuaded the couple to turn back, and the shop refunded the full amount. Recently, the Lucheng District Committee’s Peace and Safety Office, together with the anti-fraud center and the police station, awarded clerk Deng Shiqi and store manager Xin Jungao the title of “Lucheng Peace and Safety Guardians.” Not a single yuan of the 673,000 was lost.
The police report didn’t say exactly what rate of return the scammers had promised. I don’t know whether the couple got back in touch with them afterward, or whether the money was their savings or borrowed; that wasn’t mentioned either.
Just remember this image: someone wants to buy a watch but doesn’t care which one and won’t try it on, claims it’s an investment, yet is in a hurry to ship it out. If someone with no connection to you spends more than half an hour urging you not to send it, that person is the one on your side.
$BTC $USDT $USDC #反诈 #温州 #劳力士 #投资理财 #Binance Square