A man involved in the common modus operandi of people who ask for money in Chinese subways has been exposed to end up with thousands of dollars from attractive women commuters.
Many people in subways have been approached by others asking for ten yuan, saying they need that amount for a ticket to go home. However, news about this particularly enterprising young man broke out when a woman he approached write about it on Chinese microblog site Weibo. The woman was at the Shilihe subway station in Beijing when a man approached her saying that a friend had asked to meet him in Beijing, but failed to show up for their appointed meeting.
He asked to borrow ten yuan from her, but she refused.
He shouted, “Is it so difficult to find someone to help me now?”
Moved with compassion, the woman gave him money.
A week later, she saw him again, and he asked for ten yuan for the same reason he gave her the week before. This time, she paid no attention to him and walked directly to the subway.
When she wrote about the incident on Weibo, hundreds of people commented on her microblog, saying that this man had also approached them at the Beijing Shilihe subway station. This alerted the subway station police, who subsequently arrested the man.
When interrogated, the man refused to admit that he took money from commuters under false pretenses. However, when the police who monitored the station for two weeks saw him there every day, he finally admitted that he looked for people daily to asked money for them.
The man said that he targeted fashionable women in particular, since he was confident in his looks that he could borrow money from them every time he asked.
The “borrowing man” of Beijing Shilihe subway station has since been criminally detained by the police for fraud.