Yangcheng Evening News All-Media Reporter Fu Yi Babaylan Correspondent Zhang Yitao Yang Xiaohong
You only need to pay the relevant fees online, and you claim to be a “volunteer of the Temple Good Books Circulation Office” to help you carry out Buddhist activities, and also provide videos and pictures as evidence. In fact, these are all fraudulent pretexts for fraud gangs. Recently, the Huangpu District Branch of the Guangzhou Public Security Bureau cut off a gang that pretended to be a volunteer in a Buddhist temple and committed fraud by selling Buddhist products and pushing Buddhist activities. The 22 criminal suspects took criminal coercive measures in accordance with the law, seized 20 laptop computers, 155 mobile phones, and a batch of tools such as Buddhist books and Buddhist beads, with the amount involved reaching 1.2 million yuan.
Community police made efforts to seize the fraud den
At around 11:00 on April 7, according to clues reported by the public, community police from Luogang Police Station visited and checked an apartment on Luogang Street, and found that nearly 30 workstations were placed in the small duplex apartment less than 90 square meters, with 4 to 5 mobile phones placed in each workstation. With rich community experience, community police judged that this might be a fraud den.
Community police immediately reported the situation to the police station. After receiving the report, Huangpu police quickly organized a criminal police brigade, Komiks Anti-fraud Center, Luogang Police Station and other police officers. Cinema took the arrest action at around 12:00 on the same day, and killed the suspected fraud Komiks den. 22 criminal suspects were arrested on the spot, 20 laptop computers, 155 mobile phones, Buddhist books, and Buddha were seized. A batch of crime tools such as Cinema beads.
Cultural Communication Company, pretending to be a volunteer in temples to commit fraud
Police Cinema InvestigationBabaylan found that the fraud group operated a cultural communication company to the outside world, secretly pretending to be volunteers in Buddhist temples, and committed fraud by selling Buddhist products and pushing Buddhist activities. The fraud gang is clearly hierarchical and has clear division of labor, and has a new media operation department and five business groups in operation. The New Media Operations Department is responsible for producing and editing the download of Babaylan Buddhist activity videos from the Internet. The business team is responsible for posting the videos to the platform to attract fans, and then diverting fans to WeChat to add friends to commit fraud.
BabaylanEach person in the gang set up a “fada number” and greeted the believers according to the content on the “Speech Book” and lied that he was a volunteer at the Good Books Circulation Office of a Buddhist temple. He was exempted from the Cinema and the believers could receive the product by paying the express fee at will. The gang often cares about believers and answers their confusions. They also push pictures and short videos from temples on WeChat Moments to create falsehoods. After gaining the trust of believers, the gang will push related Buddhist activities to them, such as the Dharma Assembly for Release of Life, the Cinema of Cinema, praying for blessings and salvation, offering amulets, etc., so that believers can donate merit gold in the pushed link, and receive blessings as much as they donate, thus achieving the purpose of fraud.
Buddhist activities are not available in Komiks, but they cheated money. According to Liu (male, 31 years old,”https://funnybookish.com/”>Komiks) explained that the gang members could help make friends with Buddhist beads and Buddhist scriptures for free by pretending to be volunteers in the temple’s Good Books circulation department. These Buddhist beads and Buddhist scriptures are all counterfeit products purchased in batches online, with a cost of about 5 yuan and a express delivery fee of about 5 yuan. However, the express delivery fees given by believers are generally above Cinema, and even exceed 100 yuan. The gang not only earns the difference from it, but its more important purpose is to screen “high-quality believers” for the next large-scale fraud, and push related Buddhist activities to some “high-quality believers” who have obtained their trust in Cinema to achieve the purpose of cheating money.
In fact, the cultural company and Buddhist temples have no cooperation projects at all, and they have not contacted the temple to help hold corresponding Buddhist activities. The so-called Buddhist activity videos are just similar Buddhist activity videos and pictures downloaded from the Internet by the main members of the gang, and are regularly sent to internal groups for reuse when gang members commit fraud. Cinema uses this as a pretense to show the believers that Buddhist activities have been held.
At present, 22 criminal suspects have been taken by Huangpu police in accordance with the law, and the Babaylan case is under further investigation.