碰瓷 (Pèngcí)

What is 碰瓷 (Pèngcí)?

Pengci is a scam in which a person deliberately stages or provokes an accident in order to make a claim for compensation through another party. Although it is a criminal act, it is often difficult to prove that the victim actually orchestrated or exaggerated the accident. Therefore they are often able to convince the person they are framing to pay them some compensation at the site of the accident in order to avoid the poice being called, or to avoid a court case.

Example 1  – being hit by a car

One popular strategy is to feign an injury sustained from being hit by a car. This type of strategy is inherently dangerous and the 碰瓷 practitioner will often master his craft with a  friend, practicing choosing a car moving at just the right speed so they can make the injury look authentic whilst not getting hurt too badly.

For example a person might stand on the side of the rode waiting for a moving car. They would then run into the road at the right moment and make it look like they have been hit by the car. They would then throw themselves on the road pretending they have been injured in the ‘accident.’ In some cases the ‘victim’ may have already sustained an injury and they try to make it look like it was caused by the driver. The purpose of this is to try and get compensation from the driver. In most cases they will ask for cash from the driver to pay for medical costs incurred for treating their fake road injury. To guard against these nefarious activities many drivers set up cameras on the dashboards of their cars. Fortunately for this measure has meant that many incidents of 碰瓷 have appeared on the internet, one such is below.

Other tactics they may use to frame people are