Chinese police report over 1,000 fraud victims in a scheme using automated AI calls

The July 2026 report. CCTV's report (carried by CNR, 29 September 2026) says that in July 2026 a man in Yueqing, Zhejiang, wanted to borrow money for his child's summer tuition and received a call from someone who knew he had borrowed on a platform before and offered a larger credit line. The agent guided him to borrow 15,500 yuan on a legitimate platform, then said 5,500 yuan was a 'funder's advance' to be returned to a specified account. He was then told that if he transferred 10,000 yuan the company would repay his loan and raise his limit; after transferring it he found his repayment balance unchanged and reported the matter to police. The whole 15,500 yuan was lost.

The AI calling system. Yueqing criminal police officer Ye Jie says the ring rented dynamic accounts on an AI platform, imported phone-number databases obtained illegally and set calling times and frequency, after which the system dialled automatically, more than 200,000 calls a day through the AI calling accounts. Recorded scripts kept the conversation going according to keywords even if the person first refused, and the system sorted people into six grades (A to F) before transferring interested callers to human operators who carried on the fraud. Another victim told CCTV he had thought the caller was a human customer-service agent until police told him it was a robot. Police concluded that the ring used AI robots for lead generation and humans to carry out the fraud, which explained how a small office received transfers from more than a thousand victims in two months. The ring also offered to obtain refunds of platform membership fees that victims could have reclaimed themselves.

Arrests. Police located the call centre in an office building in Changsha, Hunan; CCTV reported on 29 September that 30 suspects had been detained, more than 1 million yuan frozen and more than 10 million yuan of transactions traced. The IT Home summary relayed by Sina gives the same account and says police identified the ring within five days of the report.

Later report. Wenzhou News (66wz.com, 12 October 2026) retells the same case from the Yueqing police account: the same tuition-loan victim, the call centre in an office building by a metro exit in another province, the AI calling accounts placing more than 200,000 calls a day, and quotes from the same criminal police officer. It says that most victims who received the AI fraud calls could not tell whether the 'customer service' voice was AI or a person, and it gives a cumulative total of more than 90 people detained (累计抓获涉案人员90余名), more than 1 million yuan frozen, over a hundred items of equipment seized and transactions above 10 million yuan. It does not say when the additional people were detained, and all suspects are described as held under criminal compulsory measures with the case still under investigation.

Police say a fraud ring that used an AI voice-calling system to find and engage potential borrowers defrauded more than a thousand people in two months; one man lost a 15,500-yuan loan (Yueqing police via CCTV).

Yueqing police located the call centre in Changsha, Hunan, froze more than 1 million yuan and seized more than a hundred items of equipment; the ring's transactions exceeded 10 million yuan. CCTV (via CNR) and IT Home (via Sina) reported 30 suspects held under criminal compulsory measures on 29 September 2026; Wenzhou News reported a cumulative total of more than 90 people detained on 12 October 2026. The case is still under investigation; no charges or court outcome are reported.