Translation: Boy Plays Games on Father's Cellphone, Spending Close to 10,000 RMB Buying In-Game Items

I am trying out some translation projects for fun. Over the past few years, I have been learning Mandarin Chinese, so I thought I would try to translate an article from Sina News. Funnily enough, 3/4s of the way through, I realized that this article is most likely fake. Should have looked at the comments first; it looks like some other people think so, too. Why do I think it's fake? No name of the software company, a mention of two stories, but only one story emerges, and maybe some intuition. Who knows? Kids have been known to inadvertently spend cash on their parents' cell phones, so it could have happened. That's the nature of news in China; the insanely normal could be fake while the more out there news might be true.  In any case, it was entertaining to translate, so I hope you find it entertaining to read.

Boy Plays Games on Father's Cellphone, Spending Close to 10,000 RMB Buying In-Game Items 

March 28, 2016 4:05 PM Modern Times Paper

Correspondent Qin GongXuan | Modern Times Journalist Tao WeiZhou

Although the man's credit card had not been stolen, his card was missing almost 10,000 RMB. This strange occurrence happened to Mr. Min Li of Nanjing. The police department conducted an investigation and discovered that the 'thief' was actually Mr. Li's preschool son. How could this have happened?

Two days before, Mr. Li from Nanjing's Gongji Road reported credit card fraud, stating that he suffered damages of almost 10,000 RMB. "I was so puzzled. I hadn't used this card at all. How could I be missing any money?" Mr. Li said he suspected credit card fraud.

Although it is possible that the credit card fraud may have been caused by criminals who obtained Mr. Li's information, police thought that the case was odd and took Mr. Li to the bank to investigate his credit card transaction records. The police discovered that Mr Li's missing money was all paid to a gaming company based in Shanghai. After contacting the company, the company representative expressed that an in-game bank account associated with a user named "Adi" had been the account responsible for spending Mr. Li's money. Upon hearing this name, Mr Li recalled that "Adi" was his own preschool son's English name, and that his son used that name to play a game on his phone.

The officer who investigated Mr Li's phone discovered that his credit card account was connected to his cell phone. When his son was playing a game and wanted to buy an item, he would tap to buy it and the money would automatically be deducted from Mr Li's credit card. When Mr. Li found that the "thief" really was his son, he literally didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He blamed himself, saying that he had spoiled his child.

At first, when Mr. Li's son was still small and acted out or wouldn't obey, Mr. Li would ordinarily grab his cell phone and distract his son. In the end this caused his son to form a habit of playing games on his cell phone. "Usually when I was busy or had something to do, I would just give my son the cell phone to play on. I would never have thought that my kid would have spent so much money," Mr. Li said.

Since Mr. Li's son was still young, the police investigating the case found that the money spent on buying in-game items was involuntarily spent, so the game company returned 80% of Mr. Li's fee. Mr. Li reportedly went home immediately to disconnect his cellphone from his credit card account.