Picking on the elderly is not a new way to extract fast and easy money, for wherever they grow affluent, the lowest of criminals will be waiting. In China, investment fraud is fast becoming one of the country’s biggest problems with cases of theft popping up all over the country. Nanjing is no exception with the latest sentencing of two such investment company bosses and 64 of their employees, it has become known as the “blueberry company” case.
Using extremely high returns as bait to attract people to investors, the Xuanxiang Shiyun Trading Company was able to raise millions of illegal profit fast. An early 10 thousand yuan investment got you ten boxes of blueberry oral liquid health drinks, agricultural products, health and pension promises as gifts.
11 April this year, at the Xuanxiang headquarters downtown Nanjing suddenly closed up shop and deserted the city. Soon after a large number of investors gathered outside the building. Mainly senior citizens with investments of ten or twenty thousand at stake. Understanding the situation they reported the sudden vacancy to the Xuanwu police.
Nanjing accountant Ms Nancy Guo told the Nanjinger, “It’s risky to invest in an investment company, the investor needs to be prudent. I personally use investment APP’s, for example, Alipay, I make sure to choose trustworthy platforms. These types of people pray on the elderly and exploit them by turning them greedy”.
Police later seized and froze the stolen money and went after the personal assets of Li Yuan and Sun Jianxue totalling around ¥41,792,000, 153,600 Hong Kong dollars, and 12,000 Thai baht amongst other currencies. To add insult to injury, police also seized watches, Bentleys, one thousand boxes of wine, property and land.
According to court findings, the funds were raised using two different scenarios. The first method was to raise funds for a period of 6 or 10 months and promise returns equivalent to a monthly interest rate of 6-8 percent. The second was to raise funds for a period of 20 months, each share was ¥200,000, and promised the equivalent to a monthly rate of 20.93 percent.
The court found that the 64 employees, acting alone or organised, deposited ¥389,800 and ¥1.526 billion respectively. These employees were given sentences ranging 9 months to 6 years, fined and ordered to repay the victims. After the trial, the court sentenced Li Yuan and Sun Jianxue to life imprisonment, deprived them of their political rights for life, and confiscated all their personal property. The company had swindled money out of a total of 11,000 people.
