"We’ve seen several individuals lose tens of thousands of dollars,” ACCC deputy chair Delia Rickard said. In another variation of the racket, scammers impersonate a parcel-delivery service or Chinese authorities to convince victims they have intercepted a package containing fraudulent documents addressed to them. Victims are then threatened with extradition to China unless money is sent. The scammers claim the money is needed to prove the victims' innocence while they investigate the alleged crime. Ms Rickard said members of the Chinese community needed to warn friends and family to protect themselves from the scam. Loading

"It’s very frightening to receive these calls and scammers use your fear against you so you’ll send them money or participate in a bogus kidnapping,” she said. “Don’t fall for their threats. Instead, hang up the phone and report it to your local police. If you think the scammer has your bank account details, contact your bank immediately.” The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald spoke to a number of students caught up in the scams last year. The parents of an 18-year-old woman transferred $100,000 to a Chinese bank account after their daughter went missing from her Melbourne private school. They were sent photos that showed her wrists and ankles bound. Victoria Police found her watching television in a hotel room in Melbourne's east.

In another case, a student was told his credit card owed $400,000 and he was linked to Chinese criminals. Someone purporting to be a policeman, who seemingly called from a Chinese police department, told him he needed to get a new phone as his was no longer secure. The student was then told to check in to a Frankston hotel room and, because he had no money, he needed to send photos that made it appear he had been kidnapped. His parents might have been sent the photos if the young man hadn’t "broken the rules" and contacted his father himself, who told him it was a scam. The students were coerced into taking part in the scam. Credit:Victoria Police Henry Foo, a 24-year-old IT graduate living in Melbourne, received a call from what he was told was the Chinese embassy in Sydney. He was told a package with his name on it had been intercepted and 70 fake credit cards were inside.

They transferred him to a fake police department in China. which started to mine him for information, such as his passport number, before he was informed he was caught up in a criminal banking case and was sent a phoney warrant. “They kept on saying if I don’t co-operate with them they are going to take me back to Beijing and lock me up,” Mr Foo told The Age. “I thought this was real. I was terrified. They told me I couldn’t tell anyone, not even my parents.” Mr Foo was told he must send $100,000 in Chinese yuan, but because he didn’t have the money he started asking his friends and his uncle before they assured him it was a scam. “I feel stupid,” Mr Foo said. “But I wanted to tell people so they can be aware of this kind of thing.”

In Sydney, a Chinese international student was reported missing last month after his father received a $1.2 million Bitcoin ransom demand. A still from the video Jingwang Ye's father received of his son. The father of Jingwang Ye received a video on August 24 from a social media account belonging to his 20-year-old son, who was blindfolded and appeared to have blood and bruising around his face and neck. In the video, Mr Ye, a student at the University of Technology, Sydney, begs his family to help him. Mr Ye's father, who flew to Australia to find his son, said the alleged kidnappers had spoken only Chinese and had attacked his son with a stun gun, according to reports in Chinese media.