Small-Sum 'Sugar Daddy' Scams Cross Legal Limits

An online term beng laotou has gained much traction recently.

In northern dialects, the term literally means "to wheedle money out of an old man," though the old men in this context chiefly refer to those born in the 1980s and 1990s, dubbed laodeng (old geezer) or zhongdeng (mid-geezer), respectively.

One such zhongdeng was 37-year-old Wang Tong (not his real name) who, in a recent interview with Elephant News, a Henan Province-based news platform, said he had spent a total of 200 yuan (US$29) to sustain sweet chatting on WeChat with a supposed young woman for over a month.

It all started soon after Spring Festival this year, when Wang received a text from an unfamiliar young woman: "Hi brother, good evening!"

Curious, Wang browsed the girl's WeChat Moments and found her page filled with playful, sweet selfies, with captions like: "I'm so worn out today, and a cup of milk tea would bring me back to life," or "Nothing beats the comforting joy of sinking one's teeth into a piece of tiramisu."

After chatting with her late into the night, Wang reassured the "22-year-old newcomer from a small county" that "you've got a new friend in this city now."

After another late-night chat, the girl grumbled she'd slept poorly the previous night and "desperately needed a coffee to perk up." Wang gifted her 30 yuan, and was praised as "the best bro ever."

For over one month, coffee, milk tea and two hamburgers ripped off nearly 200 yuan from Wang, when he became suspicious. Wang recalled that this woman was one of several young women who approached him to add his WeChat while he was dining at a roadside food stall near a KTV bar. "There are lots of KTVs around that area, so many well-dressed girls would come up asking for my WeChat during meals," Wang recalled.

Many scammers prefer to use the People Nearby function on dating and social media apps to cold-message middle-aged men, luring them into small-sum frauds, though people thus contacted tended to be wary.

Short-video platforms are more efficient, with fake accounts sporting cute young-woman profiles and body-flaunting short clips galore.

Some romance baiters first like or share the videos posted by middle-aged men they are targeting, creating the impression that the woman is genuinely interested in their content.

To boost scam success, scammers buy specialized online tools, ranging from coaching courses, voice-changing and fake image software, to fraudulent third-party payment plugins that cover up money trails.

A reporter from Elephant News, disguised as a customer, paid 38 yuan for a full "How to Charm Men" script, including chapters titled "How to sound classy," and "Dictate other people's emotions," alleging that the course was sufficient to bring gullible men fully under their thumbs.

Armed with these voice-changing and fake-video tools, the sweet-talking scammers could be men of any age.

A 138-yuan QQ and WeChat virtual video and location spoofing package, for instance, enables users to alter their real-time GPS location and play prefabricated footage of attractive young women on demand during live video calls.

The software is valid for only 40 days, and more money is needed for extended use.

Feeding a certain text into a WeChat voice changer can translate it into the voice of a cute teenager, or a sultry adult female, duly spiced up with coquettish gasps.

To spare users the trouble of looking for tantalizing images online, gigabytes of stock photos, videos, and suggestive clips are also on sale, priced from 50 to 120 yuan.

In a raid in July last year, police in Zibo, east China's Shandong Province, nabbed 14 men who took turns role-playing the same innocent young woman online using these tools.

Armed with over 50 mobile phones, they chiefly targeted lonely single men aged over 35. A whole package of scam courses and software, priced at 1,500 yuan total, was formidable for these small-sum scammers, but young scammers (males or females) could pool money together to split the expenses.

Both scammers and victims tend to take it lightly, because the sums involved are usually small, though in a recent media interview with Elephant News, Fu Jian, chief attorney at Henan Zejin Law Firm, asserted that such schemes, teetering precariously on the fringes of the law, are either an illegal infraction or a criminal offense.

"Whether fabricating hardships to win sympathy, or impersonating women to obtain small cash transfers, or feigning romantic interest for illegal gains, they all qualify as fraud," Fu explained, adding that gains worth 3,000 to 10,000 yuan (by the scammers, depending on the investigation) could lead to imprisonment, or criminal detention, in addition to fines.

In other words, while individual transfer of money in the scams is small, given multiple victims, the scammers might trigger felony charges if their total gains exceed the 3,000-yuan threshold.