Ms Lai shows her bank statement to a reporter from Beijing Evening News after realising her savings had disappeared
A critically ill boy in China has blown 150,000 yuan (£17,000) in his mother’s account after getting addicted to playing video game King of Glory, which is dubbed the ‘internet heroin’.
What he didn’t realise was that the fund was all the money his mother had to treat his leukaemia.
The mother, named Lai Donghong from Guangzhou, only found out the situation when she was trying to pay for the medical bills for her 10-year-old son, but realised her money was gone.
A worried Ms Lai immediately went to get a bank statement, and the statement showed that ‘five or six’ transactions had been in this month alone, according to Beijing Evening News.
Each time, the sum was 8,000 yuan (£900), said the report.
Ms Lai, a migrant worker, went to the police. Officers were able to help her find out that the money had been sent to an account holder, whose name was ‘King of Glory’.
Ms Lai’s son (not pictured) has leukaemia and is addicted to playing video game King of Glory
‘King of Glory’ (pictured) is a hugely popular multi-player video game dubbed ‘internet heroin’
Ms Lai recognised the name instantly – it was her son’s favourite video game. She then realised that it was her own ill son who had used the life-saving funds.
‘King of Glory’ is a hugely popular multi-player video game billed as the ‘internet heroin’ by Chinese media.
Developed by Tencent, one of China’s largest internet service providers in 2015, King of Glory is said to have attracted some 50 million people to play at the same time.
Taotao took his mother’s money from her digital wallet in WeChat, a popular Chinese social media platforming. A Chinese girl is pictured chatting with WeChat in the file photo
In the family’s 100-sqaure-foot rented flat, Ms Lai’s son Taotao told a reporter from Beijing Evening News that he had transferred the money from her mother’s WeChat account to his own WeChat account before using it to play the game.
WeChat is a Chinese social media platform with various functions, including a digital wallet.
The 10-year-old claimed that he had seen her mother using the money-transfer function on WeChat and remembered how to use it, but he said he had not known the digits on the screen meant real money.
Apparently, Ms Lai has racked up £56,000 debts in order to treat her son since Taotao was diagnosed leukaemia last May.
Beijing Evening News reported that the mother was able to retrieve two-thirds of the 150,000 yuan after explaining the situation to the gaming company.