13 arrested in China over $206,000 street xiangqi scam

By Xuan Binh April 25, 2025 | 03:05 pm PT

Authorities in Zhaotong City, Yunnan Province, have arrested 13 people from a family for orchestrating a street Chinese chess (xiangqi) scam that took 1.5 million yuan (US$206,000) from victims in four years by luring them to make bets.

A game of street xiangqi. Illustration photo by Pexels

The group allegedly operated in busy public areas, where they set up xiangqi boards on the ground. These boards featured complex endgame scenarios, designed to lure curious people passing by into betting money in exchange for a chance to solve the puzzle. If players succeeded, they would win the bet and if not, they lost their money, Sina reported.

Police said on April 22 that they had arrested a group of scammers who had been operating for more than four years, committing 34 crimes, causing damages of $206,000.

The group operated in densely populated areas such as Zhaoyang District. Every time they cheated a player out of a significant amount of money, they would move to another area to continue their scam.

The group have a clear division of roles. Some members posed as the game masters, while others acted as spectators or fake players who pretended to win repeatedly and receive a large amount of money. These staged wins helped build trust and attract more participants. Meanwhile, others in the group stirred excitement and encouraged bystanders to place higher bets through chants and provocations.

Once a player took the bait, the scammers would deliberately lose a small bet to gain the victim's confidence, then raise the stakes and manipulate the game to ensure the player lost the larger amount.

These puzzles were often extremely complex and required dozens of moves to solve. Even if a player succeeded once, the outcome could be entirely different the next time.

This type of street xiangqi fraud is not new in China. In August 2024, police in Chongqing arrested a similar group for swindling 12,500 yuan and sentenced them to six to ten months in prison.

Earlier, in November 2020, a court in Zhuzhou City, Hunan Province, sentenced ten individuals to up to five years in prison for scamming 31 victims out of 199,000 yuan.In 2019, a court in Yichun, Jiangxi Province, handed 14 months to over three years in prison to another gang, which included a case where a single victim was defrauded of 148,000 yuan.

In Vietnam, similar puzzling xiangqi games are often found at spring festivals, where they continue to attract large crowds of curious participants.