Woman in Shanghai stages sham wedding, scams relatives out of US$1.6M

Chinese woman hitchhiker persuades random driver who picked her up to "marry" her, lies about rented properties, and tells friends and relatives her "new husband" is real estate entrepreneur.

A Shanghai woman staged a wedding with a man posing as a rich real estate businessman, promised to buy her relatives cheap properties and scammed 12 million yuan (US$1.6 million) out of them.

In a story that has shocked mainland social media, the 40-year-old woman, surnamed Meng, hatched a plan to con her relatives when the small real estate agency she ran failed in 2014, Shanghai TV reported in January.

In order to convince her relatives, she proposed to the driver of a random car she met while hitchhiking to stage a fake wedding, using the excuse that her parents were pushing her to get married because of her age.

The married driver, surnamed Jiang, agreed and held a wedding with her using a pseudonym.

Meng told her relatives that Jiang was responsible for the construction of many big real estate projects, and had connections in the business that allowed them to purchase new properties cheaply.

Meng then bought a small flat worth one million yuan (US$137,000), and sold it to her cousin at half the price.

She then asked him to lie to the relatives that he only paid half price because Meng and Jiang had connections.

Meng also took her relatives to the showrooms of new residential compounds, and told them she could lower the price by 5,000 yuan (US$700) per square metre, about 20 per cent cheaper than the original price.

At least five relatives were reported to have fallen into Meng’s trap and gave her a big sum of money to buy flats. Some even sold the flats they lived in to change for a better property.

Meng first stalled for years saying it took time to arrange the discount, and around 2018 and 2019, she rented flats for those relatives and lied that they were the properties they bought.

She did not give them a property ownership certificate saying it was “temporarily impossible” to get one for discount properties.

It was only when one of the victims realised something was wrong, and went to check with the real property developer, that she discovered the flat she lived in was not owned by her.

Another victim, Meng’s cousin, even spent more than 100,000 yuan (US$14,000) to decorate and furnish a rented flat.

A court jailed Meng for 12 years and six months for contract fraud.

Her fake husband received six years because he was the one who 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.

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