Shanghai police say man posted AI-generated videos of his father gravely ill while borrowing over 1.7 million yuan from friends

The police account. On 26 October 2026 the Shanghai Public Security Bureau told ThePaper, and China News Service reported, that police in Putuo district had broken a fraud case. On the evening of 16 October a police station in the district received a call reporting that the caller had found a man who owed money and that a dispute had broken out; patrol officers went to the scene and brought three creditors and the man to the station. Police said the man and the three were friends, and that from 2019 he had repeatedly borrowed from them on pretexts such as technology investment, marriage and a home purchase, and company cash flow. Later he said his father had cancer and needed urgent treatment, and then that his father had died and he needed funeral money. The borrowing grew to more than 1.7 million yuan.

The AI videos. Police said that when the man saw the scheme was exposed he confessed that all of the pretexts were invented to win his friends' sympathy, and that to make the scam more credible he had used AI to generate short videos of his father gravely ill in bed and posted them on his WeChat Moments feed. China News Service quotes an officer at the station giving the same account. HK01, relaying the police account and a mainland report, says that in February 2026 he posted photos and videos of himself caring for his father at a hospital bed, that on 17 August he said his father had died and kept asking friends for money, that his father knew nothing of it, and, in more cautious wording than the police account, that the related photos and videos should be AI-generated. ThePaper published a police-supplied screenshot it captions as a short video generated with AI.

The money. Police said checks of transfers and chat records showed that the money never went where he had said; nearly all of it was put into the stock market and lost. HK01 also reports that police found he ran six WeChat accounts playing a doctor, a superior, a cemetery manager, a lawyer and a woman in a relationship with a friend.

What is not known. The sources do not identify the AI tool, how many people saw the videos, how much was borrowed after they were posted or from whom, or how many people in total lent him money. The 1.7 million yuan total covers borrowing since 2019 on several pretexts, most of them made before the AI videos were posted.

Shanghai police say a man borrowed more than 1.7 million yuan from classmates and friends on invented pretexts since 2019, later claiming his father had cancer and had died, and that he posted AI-generated videos of his father gravely ill to make the story credible; the money was lost on the stock market. The share of the losses that followed the videos is not reported.

Putuo police detained the man on suspicion of fraud; police said on 26 October 2026 that the case was under further investigation. No charge, trial or repayment is reported.