Lan Zhanfei was kidnapped, and the layout was prepared six months ago.
Lan Zhanfei is an internet celebrity with tens of millions of fans. He started as a professional e-sports player, later became a game streamer, and recently transformed into a traveling blogger who runs all over the world, having visited places like Antarctica and New York. He is very high-profile, claiming in his live streams that if he works hard on advertisements and live commerce, he can earn nine figures in a year, amounting to over 100 million yuan. According to platform data, his advertising price for one short video can reach as high as 1.5 million yuan. Just last night, he revealed that he was kidnapped while traveling in South Africa: from his description, this kidnapping was meticulously planned and prepared six months in advance.
Step one: Planning for six months, with great patience. This person claimed to be a fan and knew six months in advance that the blogger would travel from Cape Town to the South Pole, indicating he had been monitoring Lan Zhanfei for a long time. He bribed the airline's crew to accurately grasp the flight time of Lan Zhanfei flying from Kenya to Cape Town.
Step two: Three groups of cars ambushed at the airport. When Lan Zhanfei landed in Cape Town, he was already at the airport pretending to be a fan and was refused when he asked to hang out. He then resorted to a deadly move: he arranged three groups of people disguised as taxis, waiting outside the airport. This meant that regardless of which taxi the blogger chose, as long as it was not an official one, he would fall directly into a trap. This was equivalent to setting a net at the exit, ensuring the prey could not escape.
Step three: Not only bribing the airline and police but also hotels, covering the entire information chain. Lan Zhanfei fortunately chose a regular taxi to the hotel. The kidnappers followed him closely and bribed hotel staff to obtain the room card. This step was crucial: not only did they know where he was staying, but they could also legally open his hotel door. Step four: Precise action in the dead of night. They chose to act on the night before Lan Zhanfei's departure to the South Pole, timing it perfectly—since the victim was about to leave, his guard might be down, and it would be difficult to remain after the fact.
At midnight, they used the room card to open the door, bringing in two armed men and completely controlling the situation while the victim was asleep. From the time of falling asleep to being controlled, the victim had no reaction time. Step five: Using forged criminal evidence to threaten, preventing him from daring to report to the police. After controlling the person, they did not just rob money: they coerced the victim into operating online loans, maximizing cash extraction. They collected fingerprints, hair, saliva, and semen. This was an extremely insidious step; they had previously bribed local corrupt police to prepare to fabricate a rape case to frame Lan Zhanfei with these pieces of evidence. This made Lan Zhanfei afraid to report to the police even after the kidnappers left, as reporting could mean he would be arrested first.
This is using legal weapons to imprison the victim in reverse. During the robbery, he also pretended to be a fan and threatened Lan Zhanfei with a knife to chat. In retrospect, this was not a chat at all, but rather to buy time while waiting for domestic transfers to arrive, ensuring that all the money they could get would be safely secured. Step six: An ultimatum forcing you to leave the country, making the case harder to investigate. At around four or five in the morning, when leaving, he ordered Lan Zhanfei to fly to the airport and return home by 8 a.m., or he would kill him. This seemed like a threat, but it was also part of his escape plan, forcing the victim to leave the scene quickly, increasing the difficulty for the police investigation, while also giving himself ample time to escape.
This was not a typical robbery but a crime project targeting specific individuals, exploiting system loopholes, conducting comprehensive extraction, and carefully designing an escape route. Regarding the entire process with Lan Zhanfei, I am most curious about two points: 1) Why did they collect Lan Zhanfei's semen? Is it a honey trap?? Only the parties involved would know. 2) Lan Zhanfei has over ten million in WeChat, Alipay, and bank cards; why is he still concerned about online loans? My personal guess is that Lan Zhanfei invested in financial products, and it takes time to transfer out, while taking down several online loans could amount to several million. Additionally, I noticed that foreign kidnapping cases often have very long setups. For example, in the recent Philippines ransom case, they traveled thousands of miles to find targets at a trade show, even spending hundreds of thousands on tickets, flights, and hotels.
Previously, there was a blogger named Brother Feng who almost got kidnapped by Chinese nationals in Ukraine, but fortunately, he ran fast and was not captured. Fame can attract danger, and now a blogger with millions has become a walking bank. Traveling alone around the world and only encountering trouble now can also be considered good luck, thankful that he wasn't silenced.
