Telecom scam targets charitable

Web users will not have lost a lot of money if they responded by cellphone to a plea to trace a missing child, which was later suspected of being a telecom scam, experts said Tuesday.

A message, posted on a Sina microblog in mid-February, said a 13-year-old girl named Xie Lu from Beijing No.3 Middle School was missing.

The message asked people to repost it, and gave the number of the alleged father of the missing girl. Thousands of people reposted it, including a number of high-profile microbloggers.

After the original post, a subsequent message spread on Sina, claiming that anyone who called the cellphone would be charged extra, and the owner had made tens of thousands of yuan in several days.　

On Tuesday, the cellphone was turned off. The China Unicom number is registered to Baise in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

An anonymous media officer with Sina Weibo said that the post was traced to January 5, when the name Xie Lu was first used, but it had used a school in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province.

"We dealt with this case on January 7 after a Web user reported to us that the news about Xie Lu was fake," he said.

"Through our own channels, we found out it's suspected of being a fraudulent toll number. However, I can't tell you how we found this out," he said.

A search on Sina for the cellphone number reveals numerous posts involving the alleged missing Xie Lu from many different places in China.

A media officer, surnamed Li, with Baise police station said they have no idea of the fraud.

"We'll investigate it only if people who have suffered a loss report it to us," she said.

Zeng Jianqiu, professor with Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications said technically speaking, people being called cannot fraudulently divert the caller's telephone fee unless they can penetrate a telecom company's firewall.　

"But there is another kind of cellphone fraud. Sometimes there is a network of people who use a premium-rate number which charges callers more money, like when they call a phone sex line, but then they divide the money with the telecom companies," said Zeng.

An official with China Unicom said that he has never heard that people can divert a cellphone fee from people who call them, instead of the telecom company being paid.

Zang Fanqing, a lawyer with Beijing Yijia Law Firm, said that Chinese law has severe penalties for fraudsters who use charity to take advantage of people online.

"Suspects who earn over 5,000 yuan will face detention and those who earn above 10,000 yuan will face at least 6 months in prison," he said.