"Gold-plated silver" frauds pretending to be pure gold amounting to over 2.4 million yuan, a woman in Yunnan has been detained.

On April 7, Shangyou News learned from the Mengzi Municipal Public Security Bureau in Honghe Prefecture, Yunnan, that a series of “gold-plated silver” impersonation-and-collateral scams were recently successfully solved. The total amount involved is over 2.4 million yuan.

According to the investigation, suspect Guo [someone] chose to take a risk and used “gold-plated silver” jewelry to impersonate real gold and carry out the fraud after accumulating a large amount of debt and having her accounts frozen. From July to September 2025, Guo [someone] first defrauded victim Wang [someone] out of over 1.7 million yuan using this method. Between November 21 and December 8 of the same year—over half a month—she also, through an intermediary surnamed Lü, successively used “gold-plated silver” jewelry to mortgage a total of more than 1,100 grams to Ms. Tan ten times,骗得 more than 760k yuan.

To gain the victim’s trust, Guo [someone] not only purchased and ordered fake invoices online and sent them to the other party, but also paid the interest on time, and asked the merchant to remove the steel stamps on the jewelry. She then used sophisticated craftsmanship to make the fake gold difficult to distinguish by the naked eye. After being reminded by a relative to conduct a test, Ms. Tan discovered she had been deceived and reported the case to the police. On December 9, 2025, police arrested Guo [someone] in Ruili City together with the bank cards she provided and her boyfriend Xie [someone], who handled payment verification.

It is reported that the intermediary surnamed Lü was not aware of the fake gold matter and only earned a commission from the deal. At present, Guo [someone] has been taken into criminal coercive measures according to law, and the case has been transferred to the procuratorate for review and prosecution.

（Reporter Li Wentao, Shangyou News）

Source: Shangyou News