Chat history, portable hard disk... A fund-raising scam has surfaced

"Li Youcai and Wang Xiaoyan introduced to us that the certificate of deposit has a high interest rate in this way, and it can also be taken as you go, which is very convenient. We look at the stack of certificates of deposit with the seal of the head office, feel very formal, in the form of a certificate of deposit invested money, now know that the original certificate of deposit is PS, the seal is also carved by themselves ..." The people who were deceived by the investment recalled the scene when Li Youcai and Wang Xiaoyan let them invest, and felt helpless.

In the past two years, Li Youcai and Wang Xiaoyan have defrauded investors of more than 12 million yuan with high interest rates as bait. On December 3, 2021, Li Youcai was sentenced to 11 years in prison and fined 300,000 yuan by the Intermediate People's Court of Zibo City, Shandong Province, for committing fund-raising fraud, and Wang Xiaoyan was sentenced to four years and six months in prison and fined 100,000 yuan for illegally absorbing deposits from the public.

A large amount of evidence was destroyed and hidden

In October 2020, the case was transferred to the Gaoqing County Procuratorate for review and prosecution. An Liangliang, the procurator who undertook the case, made a mistake after carefully reviewing the case file materials. When Li Youcai and Wang Xiaoyan arrived at the case, they did not extract the relevant data and records from the mobile phone they used during the partnership, and the data on their company's computer was also cleaned up. A large amount of evidence has been destroyed and hidden, and the evidence for direct conviction is relatively weak.

"Wang Xiaoyan, who studied law as a bachelor and has a certain sense of anti-investigation, defended herself as not guilty of crimes and provided audio evidence that she was unaware of many things." Commenting on the case, An Liangliang said, "Because it was during the epidemic period, the public security organs were unable to detain the two people and went through the formalities for release on guarantee pending further investigation. ”

An Liangliang analyzed that the mobile phones provided by Li Youcai and Wang Xiaoyan did not have WeChat chat software, and Li Youcai's mobile phone had traces of being brushed, which showed that there was a lot of unfavorable information in the mobile phones of the two people, and how to extract the relevant information was crucial to this case.

To this end, he once again examined and compared the existing evidence, especially the whereabouts of the funds raised, and found many doubts.

Illegal fund-raising account information was found

After comparing the bank card flow of Li Youcai's personal fund-raising account, the procurator handling the case found that in addition to li Youcai squandering most of the funds raised for shopping and consumption, there were several large sums of money sent to Chen Xiaolin and others.

On October 29, 2020, the procurator handling the case issued a supplementary investigation outline to the public security organs, recommending that key witnesses chen Xiaolin and others be found according to the flow of funds in Li Youcai's account. After investigation, Chen Xiaolin was once one of Li Youcai's lovers. The police investigated from Chen Xiaolin and others that Li Youcai had fabricated fake projects, and also learned that Wang Xiaoyan learned of Li Youcai's family from Chen Xiaolin in April 2019.

In view of the problem that the accounts were incomplete and the original chat data was not obtained, although the public security organs were unable to supplement the above evidence after two supplementary investigations, in order to avoid the overtime handling of the case, the court decided to supplement the investigation on its own.

On February 23, 2021, the procurator handling the case led the judicial police to conduct a raid on Wang Xiaoyan's residence with the assistance of the public security police, and found a mobile hard disk and a mobile phone. The mobile phone has the chat records of her and Li Youcai and others, and the mobile hard disk has a large amount of information about her and Li Youcai's illegal fundraising, including accounts and the use of funds. It turned out that since learning of Li Youcai's deceptive behavior, Wang Xiaoyan quietly began to preserve relevant evidence, premeditated conversations with Li Youcai and recorded them.

On March 15, 2021, the procuratorate decided to arrest Li Youcai and Wang Xiaoyan respectively. On March 30, the Gaoqing County Procuratorate filed a public prosecution in accordance with the law.

Guard the people's "money bags"

In 2017, when the two met, Li Youcai claimed to be doing big projects, driving luxury cars and living in villas, which immediately captured Wang Xiaoyan's heart. But at this time, Wang Xiaoyan did not expect that Li Youcai was not a boss, his so-called project was fake, and the villas and luxury cars were rented. After Li You learned that Wang Xiaoyan had work experience in a financial company, he started the idea of doing financial business. After Wang Xiaoyan's introduction, the two joined the Binzhou branch of Shanghai Tianyi Business Service Co., Ltd., which has the business of accepting financing funds.

In June 2018, Li Youcai and Wang Xiaoyan registered and established Zibo Tianyi Information Consulting Co., Ltd. in Gaoqing County, where they falsely claimed that the company was a branch of Shanghai Tianyi Business Service Co., Ltd. in Gaoqing, and privately printed certificates of deposit and privately engraved seals, taking the annual yield of 10.5% and 11% of the high profit return as the temptation, illegally raised more than 12 million yuan from more than 140 people in gaoqing County, and all the money was remitted to Li Youcai's personal bank account.

Li Youcai and Wang Xiaoyan used the absorbed funds for personal purchases, car purchases, daily consumption, debt repayment, investment, gambling and repayment of customer principal and interest, resulting in actual losses of more than 7.9 million yuan for investors after the capital chain was broken.

On May 21, 2021, the case was heard at the Gaoqing County Court. At the scene of the trial, Li Youcai and Wang Xiaoyan blamed each other, but in the face of the evidence presented by the prosecutor, the two were finally dumbfounded. On October 21, the court rendered a first-instance judgment, and Li Youcai appealed. On December 3, the Zibo Intermediate People's Court rejected the appeal in the second instance and upheld the original judgment.

"The handling of this case made full use of the statutory power of self-supplementary investigation, and the procurator handling the case accurately and comprehensively grasped the case through a personal review of key evidence, effectively improving the quality and efficiency of case handling." Li Yuwei, chief procurator of the Gaoqing County Procuratorate, said: "In recent years, there have been many cases of illegal fund-raising and illegal absorption of deposits from the public, and the broad masses must be vigilant. Procuratorial organs will strengthen coordination with relevant departments, increase the intensity of punishment, do a good job of publicizing and educating on the rule of law by interpreting the law through cases, and guard the people's 'money bags'. ”

(The company and the persons involved in the case are pseudonyms)

(Source: Procuratorial Daily Author: Lu Jinzeng Fu Lianying Yuan Zhengyu)