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Chinese ‘Tinder Swindler’ posing as Korean bachelor was actually ‘ordinary-looking unemployed father’

Woman on phone
Woman on phone

A Chinese “Tinder Swindler” who pretended to be an eligible Korean bachelor was actually a short, ordinary-looking unemployed father of three.

He Gansheng had conned dozens of women out of more than £70,000 by pretending to be a doctor one day and a lawyer the next.

The 38-year-old had lured the women in by using photos of two young Korean men he had downloaded from the internet.

He had also posed as a doctor from Shanghai, a PhD student from Beijing and a lawyer from the southern metropolis of Shenzhen.

But he was actually an “ordinary-looking, short at 160cm tall, married with three children and unemployed”, according to court documents.

He was eventually arrested after one of his victims, a 22 year-old-woman who had lost all her savings to him, called the police in May 2020.

A Hubei court sentenced He to 11 years and six months in prison and a fine of 30,000 yuan (£3,870) last April

According to the Sanxia Evening News, He attempted to match with young women from his home in Hubei province, where he lived with his wife and children.

He would send the women pictures of high-end restaurants where he claimed to have eaten.

After adding the women on apps such as Tantan, the Chinese version of Tinder, he would shower them with attention, the paper reported.

With one victim, he sent romantic text messages several times a day and discussed where they would travel together once they were married.

Once he had the women’s trust, he would start asking to “borrow” money for expenses such as paying his home loan. He allegedly swindled amounts ranging from a few thousand yuan to 110,000 yuan (£14,200) from each of his victims. He would make various excuses to postpone repaying them, and when the women demanded their money back, he would block them online.

Cases of scammers taking to Tinder in China and elsewhere have become more frequent.

One of the most high profile to have emerged is that of Israeli conman Simon Leviev who stole an estimated $10 million from women across Europe by posing as the son of a billionaire. He became the subject of the Netflix documentary The Tinder Swindler.