A retired Shanghai woman reportedly spent over 1.5 million yuan (US$236,000) and went into debt buying health services from a wellness scam over the past four years.
The 74-year-old woman, called Fang Fang (not her real name), said many of her friends have used up their pensions only to find the expensive health services they paid for are ineffective. To avoid conflict with their children, they usually hide their experiences from their families.
Wellness and health scams that claim to be using traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) are rife in mainland Chinese cities where a rapidly ageing society is taken advantage of by companies preying on senior citizens’ desire to stay healthy longer, The Paper reported.
The company that lured in Fang is called Hanfang Health Management Centre, which operates 12 clinics across Shanghai in eastern China. She said she first visited the company in 2018 when its sales staff told her that she could receive a free foot massage.
After receiving the free service, Fang felt very comfortable bought a prepaid massage card for 6,000 yuan (US$945) worth of massages. She later bought other prepaid cards for more expensive health services, including one costing 150,000 yuan (US$23,628) for “a set of treatments to prevent stroke”.
Another victim, 73-year-old Xu Juan (not her real name) spent half a million yuan (US$78,758) at a branch of Hanfang in 2020. One service she paid for was a massage to drain “toxic dampness” – a traditional Chinese medicine term – out of five internal organs. Xu spent 288,000 yuan (US$45,362) on 14 of these massages.
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A former Hanfang employee claimed the company had bought cheap essential oils off the internet and sold them as Chinese herbal medicinal oils at exorbitant prices.
The health centre reportedly claimed to have a microscope-like machine that can detect whether a person has any cancer cells through a drop of blood, said the former worker.
Hanfang has been under the spotlight after Zhang Ying, the wife of the centre’s owner, Huang Wenmin, made sensational claims the company was scamming its customers. The couple is currently going through a divorce.
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Hanfang staff often tell potential clients that Huang, 38, is a TCM guru, and that many of his ancestors were TCM doctors. However, according to his estranged wife, Huang has never studied medicine and his highest level of education was primary schooling.
Huang denied the company had exaggerated the health benefits of its services. “We do massages, rather than providing medical treatment,” he told The Paper.
Another customer Wang Lanying (not her real name) said she struggled to get a refund. The company demanded she sign an agreement promising not to damage its reputation after the refund and agreeing that any future health problems she experienced were not related to Hanfang.
Wang and several other customers have hired lawyers and plan to take Hanfang to court, the report said.
