Online Game: My Decay Drives the Entire Server Crazy

Chapter 104: The Real-World Protection Fee Service Goes Online, Helping Ordinary People Stand UpOfficer Zhou from the criminal police arrived at the Unscrupulous Business Center at nine o’clock the next morning.

He wasn’t wearing his uniform, just a dark gray jacket with black casual trousers, carrying a thermos in his hand, looking like an ordinary middle-aged office worker.

When Su Qinghan led him into the first-floor reception room, Lin Ye was squatting in the corner watering a dying Money Tree; the spout was tilted by half an inch, and water was spilling all over the floor.

”Mr. Lin, my surname is Zhou, I’m from the Municipal Bureau’s Criminal Investigation Detachment.”

Old Zhou placed the thermos on the coffee table, took his police ID out of his jacket pocket, opened it for Lin Ye to see, and then put it away.

”Grandpa Zhang’s case was closed the day before yesterday; all suspects were apprehended, and the full 500,000 yuan was recovered. I came to talk to you about some special circumstances in the case.”

Lin Ye put down the watering can and sat on the opposite sofa; Fatty Wang handed over a cup of hot tea from the side, and Old Zhou took it to say thanks but didn’t drink it.

He unscrewed the lid of the thermos, took a sip of the tea he brought himself, then pulled a copy of an interrogation record from his briefcase and flipped to a page.

”The suspect, He, who was the head of the scammers, confessed something during the interrogation. He said that after your studio intervened, all his bank cards were frozen, ATMs swallowed his cards, all payment software QR code scans failed, and he couldn’t even pay for a bottle of mineral water.”

”He even said that his mobile phone would automatically pop up a prompt box with the police station’s address every half hour, suggesting he turn himself in. Our technical colleagues tested his phone and found no traces of malicious software, and the carrier’s backend data showed no anomalies. We currently cannot explain this with technical means.”

He closed the interrogation record, looked up at Lin Ye, his tone calm: ”Mr. Lin, I’m not here to cause you trouble. You helped a lot in solving Grandpa Zhang’s case and recovering the 500,000 yuan. But I need to understand one thing—how did you manage to do those things?”

Lin Ye picked up his teacup and took a sip, not answering directly.

Beside him, Ghost appeared from a corner at some point, holding a laptop, and turned the screen toward Old Zhou.

On the screen was a complete chain of electronic evidence: the scam gang’s call logs from the past three months, virtual currency transaction flows, a list of bank accounts opened using stolen identities, and all records of their sales of illegal proceeds on various second-hand trading platforms.

Each entry was marked with time and IP address, the evidence chain was complete, and it could be directly used as evidence in court.

”Captain Zhou, we are a formally registered internet security consulting studio.”

Ghost’s voice carried no emotion, like reading a technical report, ”We have self-developed network tracking systems and fund flow analysis tools, and both commercial licenses and software copyright certificates are available. The scam gang’s electronic traces were captured by us using legal technical means, and the fund freezing was achieved through abnormal transaction reports submitted via official bank risk control interfaces; all operations have logs.”

”As for the phone pop-ups you mentioned, that is a public welfare reminder function we cooperate with a certain anti-fraud app, and the push targets are phone numbers already under investigation by public security organs.”

Old Zhou was silent for a while, took the laptop to carefully look through a few pages of evidence, then picked up his phone and made a call, asking his technical colleagues to check the enterprise qualifications and software copyright registration of Lin Ye’s studio.

A few minutes later, the call came back, and the other party told him that the documents were complete and there were no records of violations.

He tightened the lid of the thermos, put it back in his briefcase, stood up, and reached out to Lin Ye: ”Mr. Lin, since your tools are legal and compliant, we may come to you again if there are cases of telecom fraud or network infringement that require assistance in the future. I hope you won’t find it troublesome then.”

Lin Ye shook his hand: ”You are welcome at any time. We prioritize cases involving ordinary people.”