A woman who purchased almost $204,000 in face masks to sell in light of the coronavirus outbreak was shocked after receiving an empty package in the mail.
According to the Daily Mail, the woman only identified by her last name Gao sought out to purchase face masks due to the deadly viral outbreak in China. She planned to sell the masks in order to make a profit and posted online that she was looking for suppliers. Gao runs a shop on the social media site WeChat and mainly sold beauty products from her home in the Hunan province for five years.
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The scammer offered her a deal to purchase the masks for 1.66 million yuan(204,000 USD) and waited four days to recieve her goods. On February 9th, Gao received a package in the mail and discovered the box was completely empty.
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She contacted the police afterward and they quickly found the culprits two days later. The group of five was running an operation from their homes in the Xinjing and Fujian provinces. They are currently in quarantine after being transferred to Henan and were detained on suspicion of online fraud.
The investigation is currently pending after police returned Gao’s money from the fifth suspect, Zhang.