Nanjing’s police had been after him for almost 2 years, for his swindling of local people out of millions, but in the end, it wasn’t fear of the cops which led him to give up the fight; rather it was nothing but our most-hated virus.
“Officer, I’m here to turn myself in”. These were the first words out of the mouth of a Mr Lin, as he approached the front desk at Qiaotouhu Police Station in Ninghai County of Ningbo City in neighbouring Zhejiang Province.
Lin had been in hiding for the past 2 and a half years, after he had successfully fooled many Nanjingers out of a total of ¥11.8 million.
Setting up a company in Nanjing in 2018, Lin baited people through word of mouth and the false promise of high returns on their investment. He fled with their savings in November of the following year, reports The Paper today, 21 April.
While Lin calls Ninghai County his home town, the area is well known for its mountainous landscape. Thus it was also the perfect place to hide.
Meanwhile, police in Nanjing’s Jianye District filed a case to investigate the company’s suspected illegal absorption of deposits made by the general public. In the second half of 2020, the police discovered Lin’s whereabouts, but several arrest attempts were unsuccessful.
The final straw for the fugitive though, turned out to be not the encircling police, but rather the difficulties in keeping himself hidden, as more and more COVID checks on people’s identities took hold.
Hence in early April, Lin gave himself up at the police station in Qiaotou, saying, “The epidemic prevention and control measures are too strict. There is no place to hide anywhere. I can’t stand it”.
Lin is far from the first whose flight ended during these times. Other scammers, as well as murderers, robbers, drug lords, burglars and rapists, were among the crooks whose long-term evasion of law enforcement came to an end as a matter of procedure during the ongoing execution of checks for COVID.
As this publication reported at the height of the epidemic in 2020, by 23 February in Jiangsu Province alone, some 481 fugitives had been apprehended since the first COVID outbreak. Nationwide, there were in excess of 20 captured who had managed to evade justice for 20 years or more.
