Recently, Ms. Zhou from Xiangtan, Hunan, reported to mainland media that on October 25, while attempting to pay 7 yuan for breakfast with a scan, she received a notification indicating insufficient balance. She was shocked to discover that nearly 260,000 yuan (RMB) had vanished from her bank account.
According to a report by Hunan Urban Channel’s “Urban 1 Hour” on November 10, Ms. Zhou visited China Construction Bank to inquire about her transaction details and found that funds from her account had been transferred out multiple times over a span of six days, with a single transaction peaking at 131,315.8 yuan.
Ms. Zhou noted that at 3:03 AM on October 17, her previously activated SMS alerts for banking transactions were mysteriously disabled. Following this incident, close to 260,000 yuan was slowly transferred out of her account over the next six days.
She stated that she typically does not answer calls from unknown numbers, has never shared her verification or authorization codes with anyone, and has not clicked on any suspicious links. The only unusual incident she recalled was one evening when her phone went haywire, displaying a black screen and flickering, becoming non-responsive to any input, including attempts to power it off. After about ten minutes, the phone revived itself. At that moment, she assumed the phone she had been using for four years had malfunctioned, and she did not think much about it.
Staff at China Construction Bank initially suspected that Ms. Zhou had fallen victim to telecom fraud, explaining that the methods employed in such schemes can be quite intricate. The process likely involved disabling her bank’s SMS notifications, logging into her account to redeem funds, transferring fixed deposits, enabling digital yuan services, and then converting her funds into Hong Kong dollars before moving them to Hong Kong. The bank advised her to report the matter to the police.
Currently, Ms. Zhou has taken action and has reported the incident to law enforcement authorities.