Verified sextortion scammers are flooding the Chinese circle on Twitter

How Twitter’s new verification program inadvertently helped discourage discussions of politics as Chinese users find it frustrating to use the platform.

Sextortion scammers with verified accounts and stolen pictures of young Asian women have flooded the Chinese circle on Twitter, leaving replies under popular tweets or tweets from influential figures in order to amplify their presence. 

According to my own investigation and multiple anonymous reports circulating online, these scammers would hack victims’ phones, lure them into purported nude chats, record them naked and threaten to send the nudes to victims’ friends and families unless they pay scammers a big amount of money, which could be as much as hundreds of thousands of RMB, or tens of thousands of US dollars.

For a story published on VOA Chinese, I chatted with over a dozen of these scammer accounts, posing as a victim. During an audio call, a person behind one of the scammer accounts admitted that he is part of a scam scheme that allegedly involves “thousands of people” and the operation is located outside China.

Twitter has long been one of the last social media platforms where Chinese netizens and dissidents can discuss sensitive political and social issues free of Beijing's censorship, create communities and organize. The recent influx of sextortion scammer accounts have disrupted the online Chinese political community on Twitter and, according to some influential bloggers, discouraged netizens from participating in political discussions.

The Chinese circle described in this story refers to the space on Twitter made up of users from or inside the People’s Republic of China.

An influx of scammer accounts with blue checkmarks

Pornographic content has always been an integral part of the Chinese circle on Twitter and contributes to its vitality. Porn tweets can easily garner hundreds, if not thousands, of likes. Many Chinese netizens circumvent the internet firewall not just to read or discuss politics, but also to view porn, which is strictly banned in China.

The porn community and the political community within the loosely-knit Chinese circle on Twitter have been in the past largely separated. An account that mainly posts pornographic content does not usually join political discussions. The same is true the other way around.

But since May, users from the political community have been seeing an uptick in the amount of pornographic content posted in their space, mostly under popular tweets or tweets from popular bloggers. 

In fact, pornographic content has flooded the entire Chinese circle, being found under tweets from Chinese dissidents, influencers, bloggers from various fields and even state media. 

The accounts that posted such content almost all claim to be Chinese women looking for hookups. And they all have blue checkmarks

A blue checkmark used to indicate that the identity of the person behind the account has been verified by Twitter. But according to the new verification policy, which was rolled out at the end of last year after Tesla CEO Elon Musk had purchased Twitter, a blue checkmark only means that the account is paying the platform $8 a month to have its replies prioritized in comment sections and its tweets promoted to other users.

The prevalence of these accounts have grabbed the attention of and angered many users and influential figures in the Chinese circle. Soon, several anonymous reports started circulating online, claiming that these accounts don’t just post pornographic content, they also conduct sextortion. By pretending to be real women looking for quick sex, the scammers would lure victims into video chatting naked and secretly record the victims, according to these reports. The real people behind these accounts, who always turned out to be men, would then use the recordings to blackmail the victims, threatening to send those recordings to victims’ friends and families unless the victims agreed to pay them a large sum of money.

One victim talked to former Chinese investigative reporter Wang Zhi’an about his experience and said that he ended up sending the scammers 200,000 RMB, or over 28,000 US dollars.

During reporting, I was not able to find any victims willing to speak on the record about their experience. But my own investigation confirms many details provided in these online reports.

Scammer claims operation involves thousands of members

Almost every single one of these scammer accounts would first ask the victims to contact them on Telegram, an end-to-end encrypted chatting app that has a strong protection of its data. But it also means more obstacles in finding out the real identities of the scammers

I contacted over a dozen of them on Telegram, pretending to be interested in chatting with them. These accounts would always start by asking my age and location. They would then ask a few more personal questions before proposing to hook up.

After I agreed, they would ask me to download an app to view their photos and videos.

The app they told me about could not be found in official app stores. Instead, I would have to download it directly from a website that the scammers sent me. 

Conversations with scammers cannot continue until I install the app and log into it. To prevent my equipment from being compromised, I did not download the app.

But according to online reports, the app will access victims’ contacts and download the information for scammers.

In order to find out more about how scammers operate, I contacted a few more accounts on Telegram, pretending to be a victim who has already collected the requested money and is willing to pay. 

This time, none of the accounts made even the slightest pretense that they were women looking for sex. In a harsh tone, several of them asked me to send them screenshots of my bank account information to verify that I do have the money in hand. Some of them asked me to video chat with them to confirm my identity.

The scammers do not allow any kind of negotiation. During one interaction, the scammer asked me to send over 100,000 RMB. As soon as I tried to bargain over the amount, the scammer raised the price to 200,000 RMB, then 300,000 RMB.

During the interaction with another scammer, I was told to contact the scammer on QQ, a Chinese chatting app.

After adding the scammer’s QQ account, which had a profile picture of a young woman, I was instructed to call the scammer on the app. 

During the audio call, the scammer, who turned out to be a man and had no knowledge that he was talking to a reporter, admitted to scamming and claimed that the operation he was in had thousands of members.

“I got thousands of people here,” he said. “Did you think only a few people are in the scam industry?”

The scammer even asked two of his colleagues, who were also men, to greet me. During the call, there was loud background noise of people shouting and cheering. 

I was calling them from Washington DC. It was daytime in the US and nighttime in China. When I asked why they were working this late at night, the scammer said that it was “bright daytime” where he was. 

“Brother, I’m outside the country. It’s bright daytime here,” he said. “Did you think I was in China?”

Only parts of the world that could fit the “bright daytime” description at the time were North America, South America, northern Europe and northeastern Russia.

The call ended abruptly before I could ask more questions.

I have not been able to independently verify any of the claims made by the scammer. The quotes of the scammer were translated from Chinese, although an excessive amount of profanity was cut out for a better reading experience.

According to information released by the Chinese government earlier this year, China’s public security forces shut down two similar sextortion operations run from outside the country. Those operations were based in northern Myanmar.

Prevalence of scammer accounts discourages political discussions

The prevalence of scammer accounts has disrupted the Chinese circle on Twitter and discouraged users from participating in political discussions on the platform, according to interviews with three influential online figures who mainly tweet about Chinese politics.

Teacher Li, 31, a Chinese artist living in Italy who runs one of the most influential accounts within the Chinese circle, “Teacher Li is Not Your Teacher”, told me that the scammer accounts and how they have flooded comment sections of popular tweets have definitely had a negative impact on political discussions.

“Chinese users come to Twitter because they want to express opinions freely. The comment sections on Twitter have been a great platform for everyone to exchange voices,” he told me. “But the situation with porn tweets has made people not want to post at all.”

“Even if you want to express your views and have gotten a lot of likes, others won’t be able to see it because porn tweets have pushed your tweet down,” he added.

Li used to post on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, before getting persecuted by censors. He found a new home on Twitter. During last year’s protests against strict covid measures across China, his main Twitter account played a crucial role in sharing information about the protests outside China. He has since amassed a huge following on Twitter with over 1 million followers.

After receiving tips from a follower in June, Li exposed scammers’ tactics in a tweet, which had apparently angered the scammers, who sent threats to Li.

According to Li, the scammers told him that it’s impossible to bring them down because it’s such a huge industry.

“They told me if I don’t delete the tweet, they were going to report me repeatedly and blow up my account or make it disappear,” Li said.

Li said his account was shadow banned after the incident, although he is not certain if it had anything to do with the scammers.

A 29 year-old California resident from China who goes by Brother Tao and runs a political account with over 50,000 followers called “Rebel of the Walled Country” told me that his account was also inundated with sextortion scammers in replies. 

He said he has contemplated switching platforms, but hasn’t found one that can replace Twitter. He does not feel comfortable moving to any social media that encourages users to use their real identity like Facebook does.

“I don’t want people around me to know that I’m the owner of ‘Rebel of the Walled Country’,” he said. “Right now, one has to accept that Twitter is probably still the best platform, although it’s deteriorating.”

Eric Liu, who used to work as a censor at Weibo but is now documenting and studying censorship on China’s social media for China Digital Times and is also active on Twitter, told me that the current Twitter reminds him so much of Weibo. 

He said that what the scammers are doing, which is occupying the top portion of comment sections, is no different from what pro-government accounts do on China’s social media.

“Maybe the goal of (scammers) isn’t to manipulate public opinions,” he said. “But what they are doing has had the same effect of public opinion manipulations.”

Unlike what many have suspected within the Chinese circle, Liu, Brother Tao and Teacher Li all said that they haven’t seen signs suggesting these scammers were deployed by Beijing.

I have sent an email asking Twitter if they will take any actions against the scammers. Twitter’s auto-reply said that they will get back to me soon. As of the time of the publication of this story, Twitter has not responded.