 "Trio arrested in China for cheating bank of $2 mn by posing as Army generals")
Beijing: Three men in China cheated a bank out of USD 2.25 million (13.5 million yuan) pay off by allegedlyposing as Generals of People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Prosecutors accused the trio of setting up a fakemilitary committee as part of the scam, theBeijing MorningPost reported.
Li Wanyong, 54, Zhao Dongming, 50, and Han Guozhao, 60,created a fake “construction and development foundationcommittee of the PLA” in August 2012.
[caption id=“attachment_85351” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]
Representational image. Reuters[/caption]
They claimed they were PLA generals and wanted to use thecommittee to establish a state-owned bank for privatisingstate assets.
They lured a banker by promising to make him President ofthe bank.
The suspects convinced the manager to give them 500,000yuan for office supplies, three million yuan to buy 50vehicles and 10 million yuan for press conferences.
The banker grew suspicious and contacted the police whenthe press conferences didn’t happen.
All the three men denied charges.
Police searched Li’s home and found an undisclosed amountof money and falsified military certificates in a bag.
Li said Han had dropped the bag off and he wasn’t evenaware of its contents.
“I did receive money [from Han], but I didn’t … plananything,” Li told the court.
He said that he never heard of the bank manager anddidn’t know Zhao.
Li said Han showed him documents that purportedly showedthe establishment of the foundation committee, and tried toget him to join.
“If I had stamped these certificates, I would takeresponsibility, even if you gave me the death penalty. But[Han] left the bag … and I never even opened it before,” saidLi, who suffers from hypertension and appeared in court in awheelchair.
“If your friend asks you to keep something for him, wouldyou ask why?” Li asked the prosecutor. Han and Zhao bothdenied their role in the scam.
In a separate incident, a man hired a person to pose asan UN official in a bid to free his cousin from jail inYueyang, Hunan province.
They went to the prison warden’s office and said theywere promoting global peace, but were soon arrested, ChinaNational Radio reported.
PTI