33-year-old Zhong Xiong has pleaded guilty to charges of fraud for a jade scam on in Kunming.
After officers received a tip-off on 24 April, Zhong was held by police for involvement what quickly became apparent was no small-scale scam. Within two days, 67 people had reported the fraud and hundreds more victims have since emerged.
Zhong hustled his victims out of a jaw-dropping RMB1 billion in precious jade and monetary loans, making this the biggest jade fraud case to hit China since 1949.
So how did one man succeed in swindling so much?
The crafty con-artist masqueraded as a millionaire, flaunting a flamboyant lifestyle complete with flashy cars and an alleged ownership of a string of restaurants, clubs and pawn shops.
Under this guise, Zhong made friends in high-places and lured hundreds of jewelry traders and individual lenders from the major jade trading center in Yunnan, as well as other Chinese provinces and even across the border in Myanmar.
Zhong convinced traders of the existence of clients in Shanghai and Beijing wanting high quality jade in order to get his hands on the precious stone before vanishing without paying-up.
But even all this jade could not satisfy the insatiable appetite of this big-time barracuda who went on to deviously dupe others out of dough in order "to help friends with cash-flow problems," giving them what he claimed to be expensive jade items as collateral.
The jade turned out to be souvenir-shop shod and Zhong would use money borrowed from one lender to pay another’s interest…ensuring he was never left out of pocket!
Many victims believe this spectacular scam to be too impressive a feat to have been carried out by a single man, and suspect Zhong of being a mere a front for a bigger boss:
“It would have been impossible for him to complete this fraud alone based on his abilities,” claimed victim Su Peng.
And if you think this guy had nerve, then read about the Beijing scammer who conned a woman out of $480,000 by claiming to be the Living Buddha!
0 User Comments