The “AI Girlfriend” Scam: a Seven-Day Script and a Flower-Basket Test

November 2 — According to CCTV News, police in Shanghai’s Minhang district have solved a romance fraud case built around an “AI-generated girlfriend”.

Per the police notice, Mr Liu, who works in Shanghai, met a beautiful woman called Tingting while scrolling short videos. A month later, Tingting said her aunt had a brain tumour and needed treatment, and asked to borrow money urgently.

To allay his doubts, Tingting sent a hospital diagnosis and a photo of her ID card. Liu transferred 40,000 yuan that day. Over the next two weeks the aunt’s condition kept worsening, Liu sent money repeatedly, and the total reached more than 180,000 yuan. When he later asked for a live video call and was refused, Liu called the police.

After receiving the report, Minhang police found that Liu was not the only victim — people across the country had been cheated by “Tingting”. Following a careful investigation, police identified suspects at every stage of the fraud network and carried out coordinated arrests in Guangdong, Shandong and Guizhou, detaining Yang A, Yang B, Yang Tingting, Zhong and Cui.

Investigators found that Yang A’s gang hired dedicated “chatters” and built a “seven-day script”, sending out AI-processed photos of daily life and meals at the right moments. The chat itself followed a set of talking points: on day two, “complaining about overtime during an evening chat”; on day three, telling the chatter it was “best to type the chat yourself” rather than copy the script. Once affection had warmed up, a fixed plot arrived — the chatter would say she had been harassed by her boss, decided to quit and open her own shop, and at the opening hoped the man would send a flower basket as her boyfriend for a few hundred yuan.

In fact, the flower basket was how the chatters screened victims precisely. If a man was willing to spend a few hundred yuan on it, the chatter moved him on to the “tragic” stage of a seriously ill family member, to extract more money.

Investigators found that Yang A’s gang defrauded 15 victims nationwide of more than 1.8 million yuan. Gang members have been sentenced to up to 11 years in prison on various charges, along with fines.