Fraud Gangs Use AI Customer Service to Commit Fraud, Making 1,500 Calls a Day

AI intelligent customer service technology is becoming increasingly mature. With the continuous improvement of speech synthesis technology, the synthesized AI voice is difficult to distinguish between true and false. Coupled with the support of natural language processing and multiple rounds of conversations, AI customer service has been able to meet the functional requirements of many scenarios. At the same time, it also provides opportunities for criminals.

Aunt Wang (pseudonym), who is nearly 60 years old, has been in a good mood recently, thinking that it is finally her turn to make a lot of money. A month ago, she received a polite and courteous call recommending financial products. The customer service representative had a clear and pleasant voice and listened patiently to her answer.

Following the guidance of the customer service, she joined a WeChat group. Every day, the "teacher" would guide other group members on investment. Aunt Wang was more cautious and lurked in the group, watching others chatting enthusiastically all day long.

After more than half a month of observation, Aunt Wang became more and more convinced that the investment teacher and group members were of high "level" and that she could make a lot of money according to the guidance of the "teacher".

Aunt Wang first tentatively invested 50,000 yuan in a certain financial APP recommended by the "teacher". Sure enough, it generated a considerable profit on the same day. Aunt Wang then took out most of her life savings and recharged nearly 600,000 yuan into the APP.

Seeing the numbers in her account rising, Aunt Wang couldn't hold back her joy and told her family. Her family thought something was wrong and wanted to redeem the investment, but they found that the funds had not been credited to their account for a long time and no one answered the customer service line.

Aunt Wang then realized that she might have been deceived. When she came to her senses, she had been kicked out of the investment WeChat group, and her once patient and enthusiastic investment mentor could no longer be contacted.

In desperation, Aunt Wang and her family had no choice but to call the police.

In two and a half months, the fraud gang and the technology provider gang were taken down

After just over two months of investigation, the police finally succeeded in arresting 19 suspects and seized a large number of computers and mobile phones used in the crime.

May 9 day:AI customer service phishing, can make 1500 calls a day

The police in Yueyang City, Hunan Province discovered during their work thatAn information service company located in a community at Xinlukou, Yueyanglou District, is suspected of engaging in illegal telecommunications fraud activities.Therefore, seven employees of the company were taken to the law enforcement center for investigation.

Upon investigation, the person in charge of the company, Huang Mouhua (male, 32 years old, from Yueyang City),The intelligent customer service in the purchased "AI platform" makes 1,000-1,500 calls a day, using the language of recommending investment products to make phishing calls..

The victims who are currently investing in stocks or have the intention to invest in stocks will then be pulled into a pre-established fake stock trading WeChat group.

Often, among hundreds of people in a group, less than 10 are the victims. The rest are zombie WeChat accounts that cooperate with the performance, exchanging false high returns in the group every day, and then defrauding the victims.

Huang Mouhua was criminally detained and approved for arrest according to law, and seven employees of the company were detained for public security according to law.

May 12:The fraud gang is uneducated, who provided the technology?

During the interrogation, the policeIt was found that the suspects generally had low educational levels and were not very familiar with the specific techniques used in the fraud, so there must be other gangs behind them providing technical support.

Therefore, on May 12, the Yueyang Tower Public Security Bureau quickly set up a special task force to conduct in-depth investigations into the technology provider behind this case.

Through investigation, the special police found that the AI customer service robot they were using came from an AI intelligent platform in Guangdong.

The platform provides multiple functions such as AI voice customer service and WeChat group chat assistant. It also provides "customers" with 78 sets of fraudulent "talking script" templates, covering health care, financial management, stocks, etc.

After intensive analysis and judgment, the police officers of the task force have initially grasped the activity tracks of the boss, agents, sales, technical and financial personnel of the AI smart platform.

July 16-18:Arresting a technical gang across provinces makes more money than fraud

On the morning of July 16, three special arrest teams, under the unified dispatch of the Guangzhou special task force headquarters and with the strong support of the police in Longgang, Shenzhen, Huangpu, Guangzhou, and Huiyang, Huizhou, successfully arrested eight suspects including Zhan Mou (male, 34 years old, from Huizhou, Guangdong), and seized multiple mobile phones and computers used in the crime at the scene.

On the morning of July 18, the task force, with the support of the Shenzhen Longgang Police,Go straight to the headquarters of the AI intelligent platform company,The main culprit Lian Mouqiang (male, 37 years old, from Zengcheng, Guangdong) and three others were successfully arrested. More than 20 mobile phones and several computers used in the crime were seized at the scene, more than 1 million yuan in cash involved in the case was confiscated, and more than 10 million yuan in funds involved in the case were frozen.

Surprisingly, as of June 2020, there were 123 accounts registered on the AI smart platform, covering 12 provinces and cities including Hunan, Hubei, Guangdong, Henan, Chongqing, and Beijing. These accounts were all small gangs suspected of financial fraud.

From late March to early July 2020,In just three months, the smart platform's turnover reached more than 30 million yuan.

Sure enough, selling water makes much more money than digging for gold.

At present, 12 main criminal suspects, including Huang Mouhua, have all been criminally detained by the public security organs in accordance with the law, and 7 others have been detained for administrative security in accordance with the law. The relevant case is being further investigated.

Technology: Helper or accomplice?

Intelligent dialogue and speech synthesis technology have made AI customer service perform amazingly, making it difficult to distinguish between the real and the fake, and also giving criminals an opportunity to take advantage.

In the first half of 2020, a total of 101,000 telecommunications and Internet fraud cases were uncovered nationwide, and 92,000 suspects were arrested, up 73.71% and 78.41% year-on-year respectively.

When we enter "AI voice robot" in the search engine, recommended results such as "telemarketing" and "group calling" will appear.

On one of the robot sales pages, the function description reads:Intelligent learning of speech, accurate recognition of responses, one-click automatic group calling, customer data management...etc.

Is technology guilty? How can we improve the drawbacks brought by technology?

This is a question we discuss every time we face the negative impacts of technology, but it’s clear that there won’t be a clear answer in the short term.

It is the technology that makes the calls and lures people into being deceived, but it is the people behind the technology who are harboring the intention to harm others and carrying out the fraud.

If you want to solve technical problems, the first thing you need to solve is still: people problems.

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