Antique Livestream "Collection Monetization" Scam: A Ponzi Trap of Fictitious High-Priced Repurchases, Sky-High Auctions, and Massive Custody Fees

Who Gets Targeted

The primary targets are retired elderly individuals and low-to-middle-income groups who lack professional antique appraisal knowledge and are eager to achieve wealth appreciation through collecting. They generally hold a speculative get-rich-quick mentality toward traditional antiques, making them easily coerced by the collective pressure of experts, fellow collectors, and buyers within livestreams. Blindly believing false promises that their collections can be submitted for auction and repurchased at high prices, and driven by anxiety to monetize their items quickly, they repeatedly pay exorbitant custody and reward fees, ultimately leading to financial ruin.

骗局怎么运作

• Precise short-video traffic generation and private domain screening: Fraud rings publish videos about antique appraisal and collection appreciation on short-video platforms to attract users interested in collecting. Hosts use the pretext of free antique appraisal to ask users to add private messages or join exclusive livestreams. Example script: "Don't throw away old items casually. Send them to me for a look; they might be worth the price of a house."
• Script-driven buildup and accomplice hype: In private livestreams, the host, appraisers, and participating fellow collectors are actually gang members. Through meticulously written scripts, they stage scenes of collection scarcity and fierce bidding wars. The mechanism uses group psychology to create urgency. Example script: "Only ten seconds left to close this order! Three collectors have already locked it in. If you don't grab it now, it's gone."
• Inducing high-priced purchases of inferior items: Backed by supposed internal platform channels, hosts promise that once purchased, items can be submitted to major auction houses, guaranteed to be repurchased at exorbitant prices with the difference pocketed. Victims are induced to buy cheap crafts far exceeding their actual value. Example script: "This piece has a minimum auction reserve price of 8 million yuan. Today's internal livestream price is only 80,000 yuan."
• Collecting sky-high custody and reward fees: After victims purchase items, fraudsters posing as appraisers issue fake valuation certificates and demand huge custody and auction reward fees to initiate the repurchase process. This is actually financial exploitation typical of a Ponzi scheme. Example script: "The collection has been appraised at 10 million yuan. You need to pay 10 million yuan in custody fees and 5 million yuan in reward fees first."
• Fake auctions for delay and final absconding with funds: After victims repeatedly make top-up payments, fraudsters fabricate fake livestream auction failures or continuously delay repurchase timelines under the pretext that items require further packaging. Ultimately, when victims realize the truth or their funds are drained, the livestream room is immediately disbanded, and the host and customer service vanish together, completing the harvest.

红旗信号（看到这些快跑）

• 🚩 Livestreams promise that any collection can be submitted to major auction houses with a 100% guarantee of high-priced repurchase and sale.
• 🚩 The atmosphere in the livestream is abnormally fanatical, with buyers frantically refreshing the chat to grab items and refusing any dissenting voices.
• 🚩 After purchasing a collection, buyers are asked to pay additional miscellaneous fees such as appraisal fees, custody fees, and auction reward fees.
• 🚩 The provided collection valuation certificates lack official seals from authoritative institutions, or the appraisal institutions themselves are unverified shell companies.
• 🚩 Refusal to use secure third-party payment platforms for escrowed transactions, requiring direct transfers to personal or corporate accounts.

真实案例

• In 2026, the Chun'an Public Security Bureau in Zhejiang Province announced the crackdown on a major antique livestream fraud case. The scam ring claimed it could help victims send collections for high-priced auctions, using 10 million yuan in custody fees and 5 million yuan in reward fees as bait to defraud multiple rural elderly individuals in their seventies of their retirement savings, involving a massive amount of money. Chun'an police tracked the case across provinces and ultimately destroyed the fraud den.
• In August 2026, China News Service and cross-strait media exposed the collection monetization script-driven scam in livestreams. Reports stated that everyone from hosts to fellow collectors were accomplices who used preset scripts to gain victims' trust, induced them to buy cheap antiques with promises of high-priced monetization, and ultimately extracted exorbitant service fees. (Source: [https://www.chinanews.com.cn/fz/2026/08-20/10680751.shtml](https://www.chinanews.com.cn/fz/2026/08-20/10680751.shtml))
• In March 2026, the Dafeng 315 program publicly reported a repurchase scam of similar nature: a woman encountered a rebate-repurchase gold-ware gift scam in a livestream, spending 160,000 yuan to buy 863 strings of prayer beads, only to receive mismatched goods and failing to recover her funds even after winning a lawsuit.
• In October 2024, the Changyuan Public Security Bureau in Henan Province announced the crackdown on an antique livestream custody fee fraud case. The host fabricated a script about divorcing to avoid asset division, promising to keep antiques safe for 3 months in exchange for returning dozens to thousands of times the escrow fee. This induced multiple victims to spend over 400,000 yuan on imitation cultural artifacts, with total case amounts reaching over 20 million yuan, and all 27 suspects were arrested. (Source: [https://fashion.henan100.com/2024/1213300.shtml](https://fashion.henan100.com/2024/1213300.shtml))
• In August 2026, the Nanjing Public Security Criminal Investigation Department announced the dismantling of four collection auction fraud dens targeting elderly groups. The rings posed as regular cultural communication companies, collecting thousands to tens of thousands of yuan in upfront fees from elderly people under the guise of auction service fees, collection filing fees, and insurance custody fees. A total of 207 criminal suspects were arrested, with a total case value reaching 140 million yuan. (Source: [https://js.ifeng.com/c/8vs6N8wNKWi](https://js.ifeng.com/c/8vs6N8wNKWi))

Official Stance

• In April 2026, the Chun'an Public Security Bureau in Zhejiang issued a police alert warning the public to be cautious of livestream scams that collect exorbitant custody fees under the guise of high-priced antique auctions and repurchases, and urging people not to easily trust collection investments through non-regular channels.
• On August 20, 2026, China News Service published an in-depth report exposing livestream collection monetization scripts, warning middle-aged and elderly groups to guard against accomplice-driven fake-buying and fake-selling scams in livestreams and to avoid high-priced repurchase traps.
• On March 31, 2026, the Dafeng 315 program exposed a livestream scam claiming rebate repurchases with free goldware gifts, warning consumers to be cautious when purchasing goods with high-value repurchase commitments, and to guard against risks of mismatched goods and unrecoverable funds.

How to Protect Yourself

• ✅ Do not easily trust free antique appraisal services on short-video and livestream platforms, and do not enter unknown private domain livestreams to participate in so-called collection transactions.
• ✅ Legitimate auction houses will never charge clients exorbitant custody and reward fees before an auction; encountering such fee requests should prompt an immediate halt to the transaction.
• ✅ Purchasing high-value collections requires going to legitimate physical stores or authoritative auction houses, requesting state-approved appraisal certificates and signing standard transaction contracts.
• ✅ If you encounter such a scam, you should immediately save livestream recordings, chat logs, and transfer receipts, and report the case to local public security authorities by dialing the police emergency number.