Don't Fall for It

In February 2025 the Canadian Federation of Chinese Students (CFCS) at the University of Ottawa asked me to make a video about telecom fraud for its 2025 Online Chinese New Year Gala.

Students who come to Canada from China are a common target for phone and online scams. Callers pose as couriers, police or embassy staff, often speak Chinese, and count on new arrivals not knowing how things work here yet. A gala audience is mostly those same students, so I wanted something they would watch to the end, and a song seemed more likely to stick than a list of warnings.

I came up with the concept and wrote the script and the lyrics around four scams that have targeted Chinese students in recent years: fake parcel alerts, bogus investigation notices, cheap currency-exchange offers and online romance fraud. I generated many versions of the song “Don’t Fall for It” in Suno AI before choosing the one in the video. Each scam gets its own scene. My friend Frank Yang plays both roles: a student who keeps getting the messages and calls, including one from someone claiming to be from the embassy, and the person who stops him just in time and reminds him how to spot the scam. The chorus keeps telling him not to fall for it.

I filmed the video myself. For the few shots where two people share the frame, another friend stood just out of shot with only a hand showing. I also did all the post-production in Adobe Premiere Pro and CapCut: the edit, effects, subtitles in English and Chinese, music and colour grading.

The gala livestreamed the video, and viewers responded well. CFCS leadership also praised it for its creativity and social impact.