A seemingly ordinary tree at the end of a dead-end road in Shanghai's Hongkou district has become the center of a police investigation after multiple individuals were discovered secretly depositing cash and gold beneath it under the cover of darkness.
According to reports, the unremarkable tree, standing over ten meters tall, sits at the end of a nameless lane between two residential compounds. Local authorities had received several anti-fraud alerts, indicating that victims of telecom scams were being directed by fraudsters to leave money at this specific location.
One victim, identified as Xiao Zhou, fell prey to a common task-based scam. The perpetrators instructed him to travel to this remote lane, place the money under the tree, and send a photo as proof of delivery. They promised that once the funds were verified, his earlier deposits would be returned.
Reviewing surveillance footage from the two nights when victims had visited the tree, detectives spotted a man in a hooded jacket on an electric scooter who had appeared in the area both evenings. They determined he was likely the courier collecting the illicit funds.
Plainclothes officers were deployed around the tree to set up an ambush. Two nights later, around 10 PM, two more victims arrived and hid 30,000 yuan in cash and 20 grams of gold beneath the tree. Police quietly approached and persuaded them to cooperate.
Shortly after, the suspected courier, a man surnamed Bao, appeared. He used a flashlight to search under the tree, then pretended to conceal something and zipped up his jacket before leaving. Officers followed him and apprehended both Bao and his accomplice, a man surnamed Xia.
Inside a garbage bag Xia was carrying, police discovered over 80,000 yuan in cash and more than 20 grams of gold. Xia later confessed that he met a stranger during a trip abroad who offered him a lucrative part-time job. The stranger compared it to picking up a package, promising 1,000 yuan per retrieval.
Driven by greed and a false sense of security, Xia accepted the work. To avoid detection, he recruited his colleague Bao to physically collect the packages. Over time, they retrieved six such packages from beneath the tree, earning approximately 6,000 yuan in total.
Both men now face charges of concealing criminal proceeds and have been formally arrested by prosecutors. Recovery of the stolen assets and further investigation into the upstream criminal network remain ongoing.
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