A 13-year-old girl in Hong Kong is said to have spent 40,000 euros as “tips” for influencers on the social media platform RedNote within a few months. She allegedly secretly took the money from her parents.
This was the situation: According to a report from Headline Daily, a Hong Kong newspaper, a 13-year-old is said to have stolen her parents over months to support her favorite creators on the platform Xiaohongshu (also known as RedNote) with digital gifts.
How could she spend so much money? The girl, referred to in reports as “Yao,” is said to have repeatedly stolen a key to the family’s safe from her mother’s handbag between April and June 2026. The 13-year-old is said to have only taken small amounts each time, so her parents did not notice for a long time. In total, she is said to have stolen 380,000 Hong Kong dollars, which is approximately 40,000 euros.
When the mother noticed the missing money, she confronted her daughter, who confessed everything. The mother then contacted the police. The officers were able to verify the transactions of the 13-year-old and subsequently arrested her on suspicion of theft.
Where did she spend the money? RedNote is a type of mix between a social network and an online marketplace and allows users to convert money into their own currency with which they can then buy digital gifts for creators. A similar monetization also exists for streams on TikTok.
In principle, minors should only be able to use RedNote with the consent of their guardians. Additionally, the platform has a “Teen Mode” that is supposed to prevent such “tip” payments.
Streamers keep coming up with crazy actions to encourage their viewers to donate:
The case highlights two modern problems
Can the parents get their money back? That is probably the big question. In 2023, there was a case in China where a 13-year-old put 60,000 euros from her mother’s card into mobile games. Back then, the mother tried to reclaim the money from various payment companies. However, that was not completely successful.
On Reddit, some users speculate that this may also be a factor in the drastic measure of having her daughter arrested. Possibly, the parents have a better chance of reclaiming the money if there is an officially documented case. But these are mere speculations.
Why is this interesting? The case highlights two problems we are dealing with in today’s world. On one hand, the previously mentioned phenomenon of children secretly spending their parents’ money online.
On Reddit, however, many users find a completely different point incomprehensible: that the 13-year-old did not really spend the money for herself, but rather essentially gave it away.
Such a case often has a parasocial dynamic underlying it, where fans develop a one-sided emotional attachment to celebrities or influencers. As a result, they may be tempted to keep giving money to the influencers in order to receive attention from them. It becomes really difficult when one actually doesn’t have that money and ends up in debt or, as in the case of the 13-year-old, resorts to theft.
Some influencers, given this context, also do not want to accept such donations from their fans. For instance, the German Twitch streamer Trymacs has disabled donations on his channel. You can read more about this here: Trymacs finds it inappropriate to receive donations from his viewers on Twitch: “I will earn better than that”
Your opinion is important to us!
Do you like the article? Then let us know!