A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels
两亿四千五百万美元，一分钱都不是抢来的：一个二十二岁的人打了两年电话，每一笔都是对方自己交出去的
Phone Calls Stole $245 Million in Crypto
About this story
A 22-year-old pleaded guilty in September 2026 to a conspiracy that took more than $245 million in cryptocurrency over two years - one of the largest crypto thefts in US history. Nothing was hacked. Callers impersonated support staff, manufactured trust and urgency, and had victims read their own security codes aloud. Chinese listening practice at four levels. HSK 2 Chinese listening practice.
This is an HSK 2 Chinese listening episode that runs about 3 minutes. The full Mandarin script is shown with tap-for-pinyin and a line-by-line English translation, so you can listen and read at once — comprehensible input in the sense of Stephen Krashen's i+1 theory. It teaches 12 key vocabulary words such as 问题、重要、安全 and walks through 3 grammar patterns, each explained in English with examples. The same news story is retold at 4 difficulty levels — use the level selector above to find the version that is challenging but still understandable for you.
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原文Read the complete story in Chinese. Reveal pinyin and English only when you need them.
English transcript reference
Today's story is a theft, but nobody was beaten and nobody forced a door.
The tool they used was a telephone.
The main figure is a twenty-two-year-old, living in America.
Last week, in court, he said: I did it.
He and a group of others took two hundred and forty-five million dollars over two years.
Two hundred and forty-five million dollars.
It is one of the largest in America.
First, what kind of money they stole.
Not money sitting in a bank — cryptocurrency, held online.
Cryptocurrency sits in a place called a wallet.
A wallet is not a real wallet. It is something on your phone or your computer.
To open that wallet, you need a long string of characters.
Whoever has that string owns the money.
So what this thing fears most is you saying that string out loud yourself.
Now, how they did it.
First they found someone with a lot of cryptocurrency.
Then they phoned them.
On the phone, they said they were from a big company.
They said: there is a problem with your account, we are looking into it for you.
That sentence works well, because it gives a person two feelings.
First: this is someone on my side.
Second: this is urgent.
And once a person is rushed, they stop thinking.
Then they said: open your phone and look, a few numbers will come up.
They said: read those numbers out to me and we can help you.
And the person read them out.
The moment they finished reading, the money was no longer theirs.
One person lost over four thousand bitcoin this way.
And once they had the money, what did they do?
Buy cars.
He alone bought over thirty of them.
Buy watches.
He bought a two-million-dollar watch.
And big houses.
They went out spending every day.
They spent fast, and everyone could see it.
Afterwards, they were found.
The police searched for a long time and finally caught him.
He has now pleaded guilty and may serve twenty years.
The part of this worth saying most is the following.
Two hundred and forty-five million dollars, and not a cent of it was taken by force.
Every last one was handed over by the person who owned it.
They did not force any door open. They made a phone call and waited for the other person to speak.
A lot of people now feel money is safer online than at home.
But money online still ends up in the care of one person.
And that person can be fooled.
Think about it:
Someone phones you, says they are from some company, says there is a problem with your account.
How do you know who they are?
Listen again
Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
What vocabulary does this episode teach?
词汇HSK 2. 你的账户出了问题 — four words that open every door.
HSK 3. Used once, on the sentence that carries the lesson.
HSK 4. 钱放在网上比放在家里安全 — the belief the episode tests.
HSK 3. 你需要一串很长的字 — what actually stands between a thief and the money.
HSK 3. 它给人两个感觉 — trust and urgency, manufactured deliberately.
HSK 3. Implicit throughout: the caller sounds exactly like the real thing.
Money kept online, with no bank behind it and nobody to call.
钱包不是真的钱包 — the episode corrects the picture immediately.
The word in the script that makes a stranger sound official.
A theft where nobody was hit and no door was forced.
而那个人，是可以被骗的 — the sentence the whole episode builds to.
人一急，就不想了 — the mechanism, in six characters.
* beyond level超纲词
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法只要……，就……
As long as X, then Y. Marks a condition that is always sufficient — which is exactly how a private key works.
只要有那串字，钱就是你的。
一 + adjective，就……
The moment someone becomes X, Y happens. Compresses cause and effect into one short clause.
人一急，就不想了。
没有一分是……的
Not one cent of it was. 一分 plus a negative is the strongest available denial, and the episode saves it for the key claim.
两亿四千多万美元，没有一分是抢来的。
Proper nouns
专有名词Sources
来源Free account
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