According to CCTV News on August 3rd, Hu Zongbing, who had been searching for his missing son for a month, finally returned home. The next day, his son, Hu Yixiao, who had been missing for nearly two months, was also returned by police. After their emotions gradually calmed, the father and son were finally able to discuss what Hu Yixiao had experienced over the past two months.
Hu Yixiao, 18, is from Lujiang County, Hefei City, Anhui Province. This case is another recent example of a man who was lured to an overseas fraud park after being offered a “high-paying part-time job,” and it has once again attracted widespread public attention.
Hu Zongbing said he lost contact with his son in June of this year. After that, he began posting online search information and tracing his son’s movements before he disappeared, searching for clues in Hefei, Kunming, and Xishuangbanna. His son’s return brought his month-long search efforts to a successful conclusion.
Let’s review Hu Yixiao’s experience of being lured abroad.
Before he went missing, he initially planned to give up his studies and leave school in April of this year. At the time, he told his family he was going to Hefei to work. However, finding a job in a big city wasn’t easy for a high school student with limited social experience.
Hu Yixiao told his father that the jobs he found either didn’t appeal to him or offered low pay. So, when he saw a so-called “high-paying, low-intensity” anchor job online, the battle between his discernment and the allure of his position determined whether he would fall for the trap.
Hu Zongbing said, “My son said his plane ticket was purchased from abroad. He was tricked into coming to Yunnan and waiting at the bus station, where they picked him up and took him away. They said there were people in Myanmar meeting him, that there was a border fence with barbed wire, and that someone from there passed a ladder to us, and that someone behind them escorted him across the border. In reality, he was already deprived of his freedom when he boarded the bus.”
After multiple transfers, Hu Yixiao still can’t recall exactly which part of Myanmar’s cyber fraud park he was lured to.
His subsequent experiences have been reported repeatedly in similar reports.
The operation was under strict surveillance, and the so-called dormitories were little more than rudimentary work sheds. Hu Yixiao told his father that most of those detained with him were young people. Despite having seen numerous similar reports and received extensive anti-fraud publicity over the past two years, young people with low vigilance, inexperience, and a desire to “make a fortune” right out of school still fall for them.
In the fraud zone, Hu Yixiao was tricked into using a scammer’s name to conduct online fraud.
Hu Zongbing said, “For attractive young men, the scammers in the zone would have them chat on platforms under the guise of romance. They would have my son act as a traffic driver or chat, luring victims to shady, small platforms.”
While searching for his son, Hu Zongbing came across similar missing persons online.
On July 14th of this year, he learned from the police that Hu Yixiao was abroad, and he was terrified. While continuing his offline search, he also posted online updates and reached out to the media.
On July 20th, upon learning that missing high school student Peng Yuxuan from Hanzhong, Shaanxi, had safely returned to China, Hu Yixiao immediately contacted Peng’s father. Similar to Peng’s experience, under intense public attention and government pressure, Hu Yixiao was also fortunately released from the fraud ring.
Three days after Peng’s return, on the afternoon of July 23rd, a fellow Anhui native living abroad contacted Hu Yixiao’s mother, informing her that Hu had escaped the fraud ring and would be returning soon. Hu Yixiao then used someone else’s phone to send a message to his family from abroad.
Soon, with the cooperation of Anhui and Yunnan police, Hu Yixiao was repatriated.
These two cases of high school students, each with nearly identical circumstances, being lured to an overseas fraud ring, not only offer a fortunate outcome but also serve as a stark warning: During the summer vacation, unsupervised high school students, often seeking to “earn a fortune,” have become a target for overseas fraud rings. While searching for his son, Hu Zongbing intercepted a young man who had also been scammed by a so-called “high-paying job” scam.
As the news of Hu Zongbing’s child’s recovery spread, he received repeated calls from parents searching for their children. Hu Zongbing explained, “My phone was constantly buzzing with calls and WeChat messages. Parents were reaching out to me for help. They wanted to understand the situation, but also felt my connections might have something to do with finding their child, hoping to use them to find their own. However, aside from my connections to a few media outlets, I had no other resources.”
