Girl spends Rs. 52 lakh on online gaming! Mother left with just Rs. 5

In a shocking incident, a girl's love for online gaming purchases left her mother virtually in penury. This recent incident is from China and it involves a 13-year-old girl who developed an addiction for online gaming and making purchases there. She ended up stealing as much as 449,500 yuan (Rs. 51,98,671) from her mother to spend on in-app purchases over a span of four months, a report by South China Morning Post revealed.

How a 13-year-old girl spent HUGE sums of money on online gaming

The mother of the girl named Wang, became aware of the incident only when a concerned teacher informed her about the girl's excessive phone usage and suspected addiction to online pay-to-play games. When Wang finally checked her bank balance, she found her account contained only 0.5 yuan (around Rs. 5).

Later, when the girl's father confronted her regarding her excessive spending, she confessed to having used 120,000 yuan (around Rs. 13,87,854) to purchase games and an additional 210,000 yuan (Rs. 24,28,745) for in-game purchases. Not just for herself, she also revealed that she had spent 100,000 yuan to buy games for at least 10 of her classmates.

How did she manage to spend this money? In her confession, she admitted to discovering a debit card at home and linking it to her smartphone. The girl's mother had previously shared the debit card's password with her daughter for emergency situations.

Amazingly, the girl even deleted all the transaction records associated with the online purchases.

Indian boy loses Rs. 36 lakh on Free Fire

In a similar incident, a 16-year-old boy from Hyderabad, India, had emptied the bank account of his mother due to online game purchases last year. In this case, the woman lost a whopping ₹36 lakh. As per a report by IANS, he used his mother's bank account to make payments for online games. As per the cyber crime wing of Hyderabad police, the young boy downloaded a gaming app called "Free Fire" on his grandfather's mobile phone.

What parents can do to stop such incidents

It is crucial to take steps such as unlinking your bank accounts from the Google Play Store or adding a password to prevent unauthorized transactions if you give your phone, or even a credit card, to a minor.