SHANGHAI, Feb 8 — A Shanghai woman staged a fake wedding with a man posing as a wealthy real estate businessman and scammed her relatives out of 12 million yuan (RM7.1 million) by promising cheap property deals.
The 40-year-old, known by her surname Meng, came up with the scheme after her small real estate agency failed in 2014, South China Morning Post reported, citing Shanghai TV.
To convince her relatives, she proposed a staged wedding to Jiang, a married driver she met while hitchhiking, claiming her parents were pressuring her to get married.
Jiang agreed to the plan and held a wedding with her using a pseudonym.
Meng told her relatives that Jiang was a real estate entrepreneur involved in major construction projects and had access to discounted properties.
She bought a small flat worth one million yuan and sold it to her cousin for half the price, asking him to tell their relatives he got the discount because of her connections.
She then took them to new residential showrooms and claimed she could lower prices by 5,000 yuan per square metre, about 20 per cent below market value.
At least five relatives fell for the scam, handing over large sums to buy flats.
Some even sold their own homes to upgrade to what they believed were better properties.
Meng stalled for years, saying she needed time to finalise the discounts.
Between 2018 and 2019, she rented flats for her relatives and told them they were the ones they had purchased.
She did not provide ownership certificates, claiming it was “temporarily impossible” to obtain them for discounted properties.
The fraud unravelled when a victim checked with a developer and discovered the flat she was living in was not hers.
Another victim, Meng’s cousin, spent more than 100,000 yuan furnishing a rented apartment.
A court sentenced Meng to 12 years and six months in prison for contract fraud.
Jiang received a six-year sentence for signing the rental agreements with the actual property owners.
Meng’s cousin, who helped mislead relatives, was jailed for five years.
