New Energy Charging Pile Investment and Real Estate Mortgage Scam: Elderly Homes Turned into "Green Finance" Cash Machines

Who Gets Targeted

The victims are mostly urban elderly people aged 60 to 85 who own property but have low cash liquidity. Generally lacking financial common sense and possessing only a superficial understanding of policy buzzwords like "new energy" and "reverse mortgage care," they are often emotionally unfulfilled due to children living away from home. Fraudsters exploit the elderly psychology of wanting to leave assets to their children while securing a stable monthly pension, tricking them into signing agreements under the promise that "the property is only a mortgage and you can continue living in it." This unwittingly saddles them with mortgage loans or even the loss of their property. Victims often only realize they have fallen into a "debt trap" rather than a "pension plan" when bank debt collection notices or court summons arrive.

骗局怎么运作

• Step 1: Packaging the new energy project. Fraudsters rent high-end office buildings, register or affiliate companies with names containing "new energy" or "electricity," fabricate projects such as "jointly built charging piles" and "energy storage power stations," and forge cooperation agreements and government approvals with central state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and local governments. Opening with buzzwords like "the state is developing new energy, seize the policy dividends" and "green, low-carbon, zero-carbon parks," they trick the elderly into mistakenly believing this is a policy-driven investment backed by the state with guaranteed returns.
• Step 2: Packaging with elderly-care real estate sales pitches. Sales representatives persuade the elderly that "an idle house is a waste, so you might as well revitalize fixed assets," claiming that after mortgaging the property to partner financial institutions, they can receive thousands of yuan in "pension" per month, continue living in the home, and redeem it at the original price upon maturity. They deliberately disguise "mortgage loans" as "project dividend rights" and "usury contracts" as "asset management agreements," completely omitting default risks while repeatedly emphasizing "government endorsement" and "SOE backing."
• Step 3: Building emotional connections through small favors. Fraudulent teams distribute eggs, noodles, and free physical therapy vouchers in communities, vegetable markets, and parks, inviting the elderly to "new energy industry presentation meetings." Sales agents take turns visiting them under the guise of "godsons" and "goddaughters," showing warm concern, helping with cleaning and medical accompaniment, and acting even more "considerate" than biological children. Once emotionally hijacked, the elderly lower their guard, confide in the agents as family, and even actively cooperate with requests for "confidentiality" from their children.
• Step 4: Striking while the iron is hot to sign mortgage loan contracts. The elderly are taken to a so-called "signing center" to quickly sign a massive stack of documents. The actual documents are typically maximum-amount mortgage contracts, personal loan contracts, and notarized powers of attorney for property disposal rather than "pension agreements." Fraudsters also instruct the elderly to transfer loan funds directly into associated accounts and manufacture fake bank statements to create a debt appearance of "voluntary personal borrowing," making it extremely difficult to overturn during later rights protection efforts.
• Step 5: Initial rebates to entice additional investment, followed by a final crash to harvest real estate. For the first few months, fraudsters pay "dividends" or "interest" on time to create an illusion of normal project operation, inducing the elderly to invest more or pull in relatives and friends. Once the capital pool is large enough, the company suddenly shuts down and agents collectively lose contact. Not only do the elderly fail to recover their principal, but their mortgaged properties may also be seized and auctioned off by third-party creditors, ultimately resulting in the loss of both money and home.

红旗信号（看到这些快跑）

• 🚩 Claiming "guaranteed principal and returns" with "annualized returns above 8%," or even promising to "write returns into the contract," which significantly exceeds bank wealth management and treasury bond yields and crosses the red line of illegal fundraising.
• 🚩 Demanding that "real estate must be mortgaged to participate in the project," but presenting the elderly with "loan contracts" and "mortgage contracts" to sign instead of "investment agreements" or "pension agreements."
• 🚩 The company lacks licenses issued by financial regulatory authorities, yet absorbs funds from the general public, with promotional materials featuring phrases such as "internal quotas" and "exclusive to the elderly."
• 🚩 Sales agents repeatedly use vague expressions such as "state support," "SOE cooperation," and "government approval documents," while failing to produce original official documents, filing serial numbers, or verifiable official website links.
• 🚩 Investment funds do not go into the company's corporate account, but instead require transfers to personal bank cards, WeChat pay, or cash collected by sales agents without issuing proper invoices.

真实案例

• On February 6, 2026, Tencent News reported that a 72-year-old woman in a certain region was coaxed by a sales agent acting as a "goddaughter" into investing 300,000 yuan of retirement savings into a so-called "elderly care project." Initially, the other party showed warm concern and sent rice and oil, but months later when the elderly woman asked for returns, the agent bluntly replied, "Every penny is gone." This case is a classic sample of "emotional offense + high-yield bait."
• According to Sina Finance on March 30, 2026, an illegal fundraising case in Xiangxiang, Hunan under the guise of an "elderly apartment" involved an amount totaling 672 million yuan, with as many as 7,900 elderly victims, including civil affairs bureau cadres among the relevant personnel. When defending their rights, the elderly encountered the dilemma of "banks' priority in受偿 (recovery/satisfaction)," exposing the hidden risks of mortgage-based elderly care scams: creditors are paid first, making it difficult for the elderly to even keep their homes.
• The Yanji Public Security Bureau in Jilin cracked a cross-regional elderly care fundraising fraud case involving over 3 million yuan, leading to the arrest of 10 criminal suspects. Operating under the guise of elderly care services and high rebates, the gang absorbed funds from elderly people across multiple regions, and was eventually criminally detained by the police according to law, with related cases having entered judicial procedures.

Official Stance

• On June 27, 2025, the Financial Office of the Fujian Provincial Party Committee issued the "Risk Warning on Preventing Illegal Fundraising in the Elderly Care Sector," explicitly reminding the elderly to be alert to illegal financial activities carried out under names like "reverse mortgage care" and "new energy investment," and urging the public to check institutional qualifications through the official website of the National Financial Regulatory Administration.
• On February 9, 2026, the Financial Office of the Hubei Provincial Party Committee released an illegal fundraising warning case titled "The Shattered Dream of a Happy Late-Life Investment," analyzing the risk fission process of absorbing funds in the name of elderly care and emphasizing that any unauthorized fundraising from the public constitutes a crime.
• On August 11, 2025, the Ministry of Public Security announced 5 typical criminal cases of illegal fundraising in the elderly care sector, pointing out that such crimes often exploit the psychological desire of the elderly for retirement value-preservation using high-interest bait, and announced that a special nationwide crackdown campaign has been deployed.

How to Protect Yourself

• ✅ Children should regularly accompany their parents to check with the real estate registration center to see if there are any mortgage or seizure records on properties under their name, and immediately apply for objection registration and call the police upon discovering any abnormalities.
• ✅ Establish an ironclad rule for parents: any expenditure or signature exceeding 10,000 yuan must be discussed with children first; any "investment" requiring property mortgages or loan notarization must be strictly refused.
• ✅ Use official channels such as the official websites of the National Financial Regulatory Administration and the Asset Management Association of China to check on-site whether the so-called investment company holds financial licenses or has been listed on illegal fundraising blacklists.
• ✅ If scammed, dial 96110 or 110 immediately while preserving evidence such as contracts, bank transfer vouchers, WeChat chat records, and audio/video recordings, report to the local public security economic investigation department, and consult professional lawyers as soon as possible to handle mortgage relief issues.