Mainland China's virtual currency "pledge mining" fraud industrial chain exposed: Long-term traffic diversion on overseas social media platforms, the case involves over 3 million yuan.

Reporters from China’s Qilu Evening News recently uncovered a long-incubation, highly disguised, assembly-line-style scam chain centered on virtual currency "staking mining". Scammers build ideal personas to cultivate long-term relationships with victims, then trick them into using overseas private chat apps and authorizing fake mining contracts, quietly siphoning funds from their accounts. According to reports, scammers initiate contact as ordinary netizens on social platforms, spending one to two months building a "high-quality persona"—such as claiming to run a maternity and baby store in Hong Kong, being empathetic, and sending "Huang Daxian" safety amulets—without mentioning investment at all. After gaining trust, they guide victims to switch to overseas apps like WhatsApp and Discord (which support two-way record deletion, making evidence easy to erase), and package the scam as a "idle computing power staking mining" zero-risk passive income project, luring victims to download overseas virtual currency wallets and authorize fake contracts. The contracts actually have asset transfer permissions, allowing scammers to directly move funds in the background without a password. During this process, scammers first create an illusion of real returns through small rebates to induce victims to invest more. So far, more than 30 victims have been identified in the case, with total funds involved exceeding 3 million yuan, and the highest individual loss surpassing 300,000 yuan, spread across multiple provinces.