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2 arrested for 6.5 million yuan fraud
By Zheng Yanyan (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-05-25 05:48
DALIAN: Local police have arrested two people for defrauding more than 200
workers hoping to be employed overseas out of 6.5 million yuan (US$793,000).
In June 2003, Lei Yuan, 39, got to know a 69-year-old ethnic Korean woman
surnamed Cui who claimed she had a quota to send expatriate labour to South
Korea.
A deal was soon struck between the two and a company formed.
Lei was in charge of recruiting labourers who each had to pay 35,000 yuan
(US$4,300) for the service while Cui was supposed to handle the procedures for
sending them abroad.
Then Lei began to tell her acquaintances that she could handle the
prospective expatriate labourers and started charging each 55,000 yuan
(US$6,600).
Lei pocketed 20,000 yuan (US$2,400) and the rest went to Cui.
She was also asking others to recruit labourers, and offered kickbacks of
5,000 yuan (US$600) for each new client.
With tens of people recruited, Lei established an information consulting firm
in October 2003 and recruited people through the company in Jinzhou, a suburb of
Dalian.
To ease the doubts of applicants, Lei arranged for so-called interviews,
medical check-ups, and even language training, to delay the date many expected
to be sent overseas.
Those more eager to work abroad were asked to pay more to take part in
training.
Many applicants did not have enough money and were forced to borrow cash for
the service.
One victim even paid as much as 63,000 yuan (US$7,600).
Applicant
From June 2003 to the beginning of 2005, the firm failed to send a single
applicant abroad. In mid-March, some of the firm's clients went to the police to
report their misgivings.
Police then discovered that 200-plus people had paid Lei and Cui at least 6.5
million yuan over the course of 18 months in the hope they would be sent to work
overseas.
It turned out that Cui did not have any qualifications or credentials to run
such a business and with the money she had made bought a jeep and registered a
food company.
Officials from the Dalian Municipal Public Security Bureau warned that quite
a number of information consulting firms had been found swindling money from
hopeful labourers in the name of expatriate labour services throughout the
nation in recent years.
(China Daily 05/25/2005 page3)
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