Three men who allegedly posed as PLA generals to scam a bank manager for 13.5 million yuan ($2.16 million) went on trial in Beijing Tuesday.
According to the Beijing Morning Post, the men, who allegedly set up a fake military committee and bank as part of the scheme, denied all the charges.
The Post reported the prosecution said Li, with Zhao Dongming, 50, and Han Guozhao, 60, created a fake “construction and development foundation committee of the People’s Liberation Army” in August 2012. They claimed they were PLA generals and tried to use this committee to establish a so-called state-owned bank and unfreeze national assets.
They lured the banker by promising him the position of president at the forged bank and the rank of admiral.
The suspects then convinced the banker to give them 500,000 yuan for office supplies, 3 million yuan for 50 vehicles and 10 million yuan for press conferences, the report said.
When the fake press conference never took place, the banker grew suspicious and contacted police.
Li was later found to have fake military certificates purporting to show the three defendants were PLA generals and an undisclosed amount of money.
“I did receive the money [from Han], but I didn’t invent facts or plan anything,” Li argued in court. He added he had never heard of the banker and wasn’t familiar with Zhao.
Li said that Han showed him documents of the establishment of the foundation committee and tried to convince him to join. Li insisted all the forged certificates to try and prove the three suspects were PLA generals were from Han.
“If I stamped these certificates, I would take the criminal liability, even you gave me the death penalty. But he left the bag here, and I never even opened it before!” Li, who has hypertension, said sitting in a wheelchair as he was given oxygen.
But both Han and Zhao contradicted Li’s testimony, the Post reported.
Impersonating the PLA is surprisingly common. In November, 15 members of a gang which pretended to be army officers to operate a "military training base" for which they charged clients high fees were arrested by police in Shandong. A Beijing man who pretended to be a police officer to scam Shanghai residents was sentenced to five years in prison in February.
[Image via Weibo]
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