Chinese scammers use stolen credit cards to purchase tickets for The Q Train

A Drysdale restaurant has been left thousands of dollars out of pocket by scammers using stolen credit cards.

The Q Train owner Marie-Claire Trotter says her business has been scammed by an elaborate scheme on Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu. Picture: Brad Fleet

A sophisticated Chinese scam has left a popular restaurant in Drysdale thousands of dollars out of the pocket as new data reveals a vast majority of Australians have been targeted by online fraudsters.

The Q Train posted on Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, which is similar to Instagram, last year in a bid to expand into the international tourism market.

“We engaged with some influencers to post on Xiaohongshu and we got a lot of bookings from it,” owner Marie-Claire Trotter said.

“But someone has now decided to take advantage of that.”

Scammers pose as travel agents and post on the platform they are selling tickets for The Q Train at discounted by prices, but customers must book through them and visit at a selected time.

The customers pay via bank transfer and the scammers then purchase the tickets at full price from The Q Train using stolen credit cards.

Following last week’s global IT outage, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has warned people to be wary of scams when downloading software to fix their computer issues.

Unsolicited software can give scammers access to personal information and bank details.

ACCC deputy chair Catriona Lowe said: “Criminals look to take advantage of incidents like this outage, creating a sense of urgency that you need to do what they say to protect your computer.”

Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu. Picture: Brad Fleet

About a month ago, a man called The Q Train after he noticed a transaction on his bank statement from the restaurant, but he hadn’t dined there.

The scammers had stolen his credit card and used it to purchase tickets for other customers.

Ms Trotter then called the customer who had used those tickets, who told her he had paid for them by transferring funds into the scammer’s bank account.

“From that call, we were able to get the BSB and account number of the scammer which we then passed onto Victoria Police,” Ms Trotter said.

Because Ms Trotter’s own credit card had not been stolen, she is not considered a victim of the scam but has been forced to pay back $4500 to those whose cards were used after they disputed the transaction to their bank.

“The only people that are out of pocket are us,” she said.

“That made me really cross.

“In this economy, we can’t afford to be losing $4500.”

Ms Trotter has owned The Q Train since 2017 and said she had never seen such as sophisticated scam.

“We’ve stopped people paying in full on the website and we now only take a deposit,” Ms Trotter said.

“We then manually charge the rest of the payment prior to the experience.

“If a transaction looks suspicious and matches previous purchases which have been disputed, customers will have to show their credit card when they arrive.”

New data from PayPal has revealed 97 per cent of Australians have been targeted by scammers and 57 per cent know someone who has lost money due to a scam or online fraud.

Have you been targeted by scammers? Contact [e-mail].

The content summaries were created with the assistance of AI technology, then edited and approved for publication by an editor.

Originally published as Chinese scammers use stolen credit cards to purchase tickets for The Q Train