Chinese Woman Swindles Relatives Of Rs 14 Crore By Staging Fake Wedding With 'Rich' Man

A Chinese woman has been jailed after she staged a wedding with a man she met while hitchhiking and presented him as a 'rich' real estate businessman to her relatives to fleece them to the tune of Rs 14 crore ($1.6 million). According to a report in South China Morning Post, the 40-year-old woman from Shanghai, surnamed Meng, hatched the con job plot after a small real estate agency she ran, failed and went under.

To give more credibility to her plan, Meng proposed to the driver of a random car she met and staged the wedding. She used the excuse that her parents were pushing her to get married because of her age. The driver, identified by his surname Jiang, agreed to the wedding and held the function.

Afterward, Meng told her relatives that Jiang was the brains behind several big infrastructure projects in the country and had connections that could have allowed them to buy properties cheaply. Meng even bought a small flat worth Rs 1.2 crore ($137,000) and sold it to a cousin for half the price.

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'The plot thickens'

She later asked the cousin to lie to relatives that he got the great price due to Meng and Jiang's connections. To further sell the illusion, she took other relatives to the showrooms of new residential buildings and suggested that she could get the prices lowered by Rs 61,000 ($700) per square meter.

Convinced by Meng's pitch and the elaborate setup she had hatched, at least five relatives gave her large sums of money to buy the flats. Some even sold their existing flats in the hope of shifting to a better property.

After stalling for years, saying there were some hassles in arranging the discount, she rented flats for those relatives and lied that they were the properties they bought. Troubled by the situation and sensing something was wrong, one of the relatives inquired with the actual property developer and that is when the scam was exposed.

It was revealed that the flat Meng was living in was not owned by her. A court trial ensued and she was jailed for 12 years and six months for contract fraud. Jiang, the fake husband received six years as he had signed the house-leasing contracts with the flats' real owners. Her cousin who lied in front of other relatives was given a five-year sentence.