After studying the common characteristics of those arrested, the police discovered that most of the fraudsters had real experience working with clients in the financial sector.
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Komsomolskaya Pravda already talked about the sensational case of the Chinese fraudster Guan Yue, who fictitiously got 16 jobs at the same time and was able to win a luxury villa in Shanghai. Posing as an experienced sales manager, she would get work outside the office and deceive employers by sending them photos of supposed client meetings in her work chats. In fact, they were usually photographs from interviews at other companies. As long as the employers believed that Guan Yue worked hard, she was paid a salary. Well, when she was fired for lack of results, the scammer left without regrets; After all, she had so many job offers that she transferred some of them to her accomplice for a similar percentage.
But it turns out that Guan Yue’s case is just the tip of the iceberg. This type of wage fraud has become a real scourge for the Chinese economy, writes the Xinmin newspaper. In the last year alone, it was possible to identify 700 gangs in the Middle Kingdom that infiltrated commercial organizations and diverted money from them using all available methods.
Fatal error
And there’s no telling how many more scammers would have fooled employers if it weren’t for one mistake. In October 2022, Liu Jian, director of an IT company, urgently searched for employees to promote a new product to the market. As a result, he hired what seemed like a dream team of 8 people with impressive resumes, offering them generous salaries (from 100 to 300 thousand rubles in our money). Imagine his surprise when, three months later, the results of his work turned out to be absolutely zero. The director was quick to part with the employees who did not live up to expectations, but they turned out to be not shy and obtained compensation for themselves.
And at this stage, the leader of this mini-band, Yang Hong, made a mistake and mistakenly sent a photo of a resignation letter from another company to a chat with the former leader. Liu Jian compared the dates on the document and realized that the careless employee was simultaneously working elsewhere. The director then contacted the second company and discovered that the 8 people were working separately before being fired and were receiving two salaries at the same time. He could not forgive such deception and went to the police.
Solved case
Another lucky coincidence: the case caught the attention of the young but meticulous police officer Mi Yue, who began to methodically unravel this tangle. As it turned out later, some companies had already complained about scammers, but no one was able to provide convincing evidence and unite the chain. The claims were treated as an ordinary labor dispute, and here no one could defeat the scammers. Thus, Guan Yue’s husband, already known to us, who was involved in the criminal business, participated in 13 arbitration hearings and won all of them. With each of these cases, the fraudsters became more inventive, correcting mistakes and cleverly falsifying evidence.
After collecting hundreds of testimonies from victims, police were finally able to assess the magnitude of the disaster. In March of this year, 53 people were arrested at once. In July, a further 108 “wage fraudsters” were arrested and in August, following further searches, a further 11 suspects were arrested. Thus, a photograph sent to the wrong place exposed dozens of criminal groups that managed to divert more than 17.6 million dollars from Chinese companies, not counting the indirect damage caused by their inaction in the workplace.
Portrait of an intruder
After studying the common characteristics of those arrested, the police discovered that most of the fraudsters had real experience working with clients in the financial sector, were professionally savvy and articulate, and knew how to please and gain trust. First, they looked at job sites for small companies where the level of screening before hiring was not too serious. A prerequisite is a flexible schedule and remote work.
Furthermore, by attending interviews almost every day and exchanging experiences with each other, scammers have perfectly honed their interview skills, knowing in advance what questions will be asked and what answers are expected of them, so they easily bypass the actual candidates for the vacancies. There is even a case when scammers hired their man for the position of human resources director, and he easily hired a whole group of “dead souls.”
There were even cases of competition between various gangs of wage fraudsters. Thus, a company hired 20 employees at a time, but then received an anonymous call saying that they were all scammers. The company fired everyone and, in return, hired new ones. It turned out that the recruits also turned out to be scammers, and the anonymous “noble” call was their work. In addition to such daring tricks, scammers also resorted to banal tricks: they forged passports, work books, diplomas, bank statements and other documents.
Despite the arrests, many scammers managed to hide and escape justice. The Chinese are determined to completely eradicate payroll fraud as it causes serious damage to the economy, but this will take time and concentrated effort. Shanghai police have sent letters to companies urging them to carefully check candidates’ backgrounds when hiring them. However, officials admit that small businesses don’t really have the resources or time to know all the details of potential employees.
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