Originally Posted by
sunzi
I love how many are saying she knew that she was purchasing tickets that were fraudulent without any evidence backing it out.
Furthermore, I am sure most commenting on this thread has never used WeChat before. In fact, it is very common to buy stuff on WeChat and lots of the time it is legit. Thus, I can see why this girl, an international student from China could feel this is legit way of buying airline tickets. Therefore, you can call her naive, gullible, dumb or whatever other synonym you can think of but to call her complicit in this fraud is a stretch without further information.
Sorry, I've actually seen people posting about CaptainCooll on my Wechat moments years ago where they boasted about how they bought business class tickets for 50% off and successfully flew. Yes, you can buy things on Wechat, many brands, retailers, travel agencies have official presences on Wechat, and you can pay with Wechat wallet. But there are also many unofficial resellers of goods and services that do not have business licenses, physical presence or any other verification other than word of mouth, so caveat emptor. There are some that are do legitimate business but there are also
many news articles from China about consumers being scammed by these unofficial resellers, including airfare scams. If I had to guess, the woman probably did a Wechat personal transfer to the account, similar to sending an interac etransfer, but unlike e-transfer that's tied to a bank account, oversea Wechat wallets do not have mandatory ID verification nor are they tied to a Chinese mobile number that requires ID verification. Scams like this has been going on for
many years, other examples include discount Uber rides, utilities, school tuitions, and gas cards where you transfer cash via Wechat and they pay on your behalf using stolen credit cards. It is difficult to believe that a 25 year old would not have read about these scams. People who buy these are complicit in that they enable these scammers by providing ways for them to cash out on stolen credit card info.