Chinese students studying in the UK have been one of the most common targets of scammers. RedZei (aka RedThief) Group, a Chinese-speaking scammer group that operates online and is becoming more common these days, bypasses all the precautions that users and service providers have taken to prevent scams.
This is how it works
Chinese students were fooled into paying millions of dollars to avoid deportation as part of a visa scam, according to a report in The Guardian. According to researchers, this incident is likely to be the result of the RedZei campaign that began in August of last year.
Redzepi fraudsters carefully selected their victims by researching them, they also sought out a potential victim who was wealthy enough to be a profitable target. Fraudsters would use new pay-as-you-go U.K. phone numbers for each wave of the attack to bypass the phone number-based blocking on each wave. There are several mobile carriers used by the attackers, such as Telia, Three, EE, O2, and Tesco Mobile, with which they move between SIM cards.
The Use of Voicemail and Other Tricks
As part of the operation, a UK phone number would be used to contact each targeted student once or twice every month. An unusual automated voicemail is left if these calls are not answered.
Students are being steered into revealing their personal information by voicemails. These voicemails impersonate China Mobile, the Bank of China, and the Chinese embassy to social engineer them into doing so. In addition, there are also voicemail messages that are posed as voicemails from Chinese government officials.
These include the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Chinese Embassy in the United Kingdom, and the Chinese Communications Administration. Additionally, courier services such as DHL and Royal Mail can be used to distribute such messages. Aside from these themes, RedZei has also adopted other themes, such as abnormally high NHS number usage and DHL international delivery of parcels.
Keep yourself as safe as possible
It appears that RedZei started this tremendously profitable campaign in August 2019. The scam was an attempt to deceive Chinese international students by duping them into transferring enormous amounts of money. This was so that they could avoid deportation to save their lives.
If any scam of this nature is suspected by students, they are advised to report it to the university as soon as possible. This will enable them to stay vigilant against such frauds. Moreover, universities can also share information regarding scams that target international students and keep them posted on the same.