"The beauty boss Gu Chunfang ran away and owed a bunch of debts."
In March 2012, the local forum in Changshu was completely bombed, and almost all the posts were discussing the person "Gu Chunfang", some people ate melons, some people angrily scolded.
Before that, Gu Chunfang was a famous "beauty boss" in Changshu, who had worked as a model, done business, and "helped big guys make money"; after that, she became what people call "Lao Lai".
In just four years, she borrowed a total of 1.7 billion yuan, from the high-ranking officials and nobles to the working class, who lent her money. How could an ordinary weak woman borrow so much money?
All of this began in 1995.
1. Beauty Billet
In 1972, Gu Chunfang was born in Bixi Town, Changshu City.
Gu Chunfang's parents are all local figures with heads and faces, and her father is a bank leader. She has a good family, grew up healthily under the protection of her parents, and is often praised by neighbors as a "water spirit", and will definitely become a big beauty in the future.
After graduating from junior high school, she did not want to continue her studies and planned to go to the society. The family did not support it at first, but they could not stop the child from making trouble repeatedly, and could only rely on her.
At first, like most girls working outside the home, she did some unskilled work, but Gu Chunfang had an innate advantage - good looks.
Although he was only fifteen or sixteen years old, he showed a model of a "beauty billet". This is undoubtedly a little more helpful for her as a "cabinet sister". Aware of her own advantages, she also intends to work hard in this regard. So she signed up for the Changshu City Model Team.
A height of one meter and seven meters, coupled with a good face and a slim figure, is a natural model. Even in the beautiful model team, she is still the most dazzling one.
Soon, she got a lot of photo opportunities, including starring in Changshu City promotional films. With these, Gu Chunfang gradually became famous in Changshu, and even had the title of "the first beauty of Changshu".
After her fame came up, her income naturally rose, and the number of people she came into contact with became more and more mixed, including some high-ranking officials and wealthy businessmen.
In the past, the girl who sold goods at the counter suddenly opened her eyes. Since she was a child, her life has not been bad, and she has developed the determination to "climb up". It's just that her life after that is not an "inspirational story", but a "tragedy of crime".
Although she was good-looking and became a well-known model, in that era, the modeling industry was not popular, most people were only limited to "small fame", and almost no one could go on the big stage.
What's more, the model is eating youth rice, how many years can a person have?
Gu Chunfang knows that in order to join the upper class and become rich and noble, there is no way out by being a model alone, and you have to make good use of the resources around you. So she thought about doing business.
Second, fame is greater than ability
When all is said and done, Gu Chunfang opened a clothing store in Changshu.
I thought that with the fame of "Changshu's first beauty", the clothing store could make a lot of money, and the business of the store was extremely bleak.
The mall was frustrated, and did not dispel Gu Chunfang's idea of "getting rich". She still maintains a "modeling career" and disguises herself as a rich man. In doing so, in addition to satisfying one's own vanity, it is also to maintain a good relationship with rich businessmen and high-ranking officials.
This approach is indeed very effective.
In the whole of Changshu, many people knew About Gu Chunfang at that time. Mixed in the entire business official circles of Changshu, she seems to be at ease.
However, she has repeatedly failed in the business and urgently needs a sum of money.
When she first asked someone else to borrow money, the other party was unexpectedly "happy". Not only was it very neat, but it didn't even let Gu Chunfang make an IOU.
The reason for this is naturally because her usual packaging is in place, in the eyes of most ordinary people, Gu Chunfang is a "beautiful businesswoman with eight faces".
Have the means, the ability, know a lot of people. Such a person is totally worth reassuring.
But who could have imagined that his behavior had given Gu Chunfang the illusion that borrowing money was an easy task. Since then, Pandora's box has been opened and completely out of control.
Since then, she has gradually stepped into the vortex of borrowing money.
Different from ordinary borrowers, Gu Chunfang always behaved very decently at the beginning of borrowing money, using the art of language, describing borrowing money as "investment" and promising an annual interest rate of 10%. In other words, the person who lent her money borrowed 1 million this year and received 100,000 interest the next year.
The high rate of return, coupled with her fame, naturally made many people willing to lend her money. Because this is actually equivalent to a disguised investment.
After borrowing money, Gu Chunfang has two main uses - to do business and invest in herself.
However, she is not the material for doing business, and she has not made a lot of money, but she has achieved great success in "investing in herself".
Of course, this is also a visual effect of using money to enter and exit high-end places every day, wearing brand-name clothes, etc.
Although it is impossible to make ends meet this, or even has no ability to repay the loan, Gu Chunfang has a way. By virtue of her fame, the group of debtors she pulled in had one thing in common: they didn't need her to pay back the money immediately, and they could pay interest on time.
As mentioned earlier, this is also an "investment" in disguise. It is precisely in this way that it gives her a huge space for operation, after all, the interest part is far from the principal, and the principal is used to repay the interest, and the capital chain is not continued. So what if the capital chain is suddenly broken?
It's okay, just keep borrowing money.
From the first borrowing of money to 2008, Gu Chunfang's capital chain has not been broken, that is, relying on the means of "borrowing and borrowing".
Even on September 3, 2008, she also invested 9 million yuan, and her brother Gu Chunjian invested 1 million yuan to open a trading company. In addition, there is a clothing store and a high-end nail art shop under its name. When she goes out, she is also a full-body brand, elegant temperament, and very generous shots.
Even in the eyes of her debtors, Gu Chunfang is a real "successful person". The interest promised before is often offered in the coming year. In those years, most of the rich people in Changshu were her creditors.
But all of this suddenly changed in 2009.
Third, the capital chain is broken
The method of "borrowing and borrowing" is indeed good, but it is not possible to repay the interest all the time without returning the principal. When the financial crisis broke out in the United States in 2008, China was also affected to a certain extent. In 2009, many people around Gu Chunfang successively proposed to withdraw the principal.
Gu Chunfang, who had no money, could only continue to borrow with a hard scalp, but at this time, there was no money in the hands of people around her, and she really had no way to borrow money.
Before that, it was not that Gu Chunfang set up a trading company and invested 10 million yuan, and this ten million was not hers, but the investment of others.
As a result, after the money was verified by the company's registration, she pumped it out and used it to repay others' loans. But the company has to continue to maintain, and it will continue to borrow money.
But after staying in Changshu for so many years, Gu Chunfang can borrow almost everything, unless "external factors" stimulate her to raise her credibility level, and perhaps more people have borrowed from her.
So she began to leave Changshu frequently, creating the illusion that she was very busy.
Immediately after, it was rumored in the circle that Gu Chunfang knew many foreign businessmen and had many good projects suitable for investment, but lacked funds.
As I thought, these were all illusions, and could even be said to be rumors thrown out by Gu Chunfang herself. Gu Chunfang did not know any foreign businessmen at all, nor did she invest in investment projects, which was just a means for her to circle money in a new round.
However, just by using such a small means, her entire capital chain was suddenly revitalized, and the people who had been clamoring to withdraw their funds were stopped, and even some people were willing to "chase the investment".
Through this hand, from 2008 to 2012, she illegally raised about 1.77 billion yuan through fraudulent methods. The largest "borrowing" was as high as 180 million.
But in the face of interests, even the most shrewd people will be blinded.
In 2011, this huge capital market was once again unstable. Everything that could be borrowed was borrowed, and Gu Chunfang really couldn't borrow money from the rich people anymore. So Gu Chunfang extended the tentacles of borrowing money to ordinary people.
The amount of borrowing has also changed from millions and tens of millions to hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands, and paradoxically, she has specially raised the annual interest rate to 35%, or even 40%.
What is this concept? In the Provisions on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in the Trial of Private Lending Cases, there is the following article:
"The interest rate agreed upon by the borrower and the lender exceeds 36% per annum, and the interest agreement on the excess part is invalid."
In layman's terms, this is where investment, but usury!
Doing business is about profit. What does it mean to borrow money at an annual interest rate of up to 40%? Savvy businessmen know that this must be a big problem in the capital chain, and even want to roll up money to escape.
When they heard that Gu Chunfang had done this, many businessmen sensed that something was wrong and went to the door to ask Gu Chunfang for the principal.
People who have been in the mall for a long time are clear, but those ordinary people are not clear. Under the temptation of huge interests, coupled with the set of Gu Chunfang's words, not to mention that many people have indeed made a lot of money by relying on her over the years. Driven by profit, these people voluntarily lent out the money.
This huge capital market has become more complex and more fragile with the addition of ordinary people. Maybe one hundred and eighty thousand is nothing to businessmen, but for ordinary people, it is half a life's savings.
Therefore, when Gu Chunfang borrowed money more and more frequently, and promised interest for longer and longer, more and more people began to ask for withdrawal, which undoubtedly aggravated the speed of the entire capital chain.
In 2012, Gu Chunfang's capital chain was completely broken!
IV. Sentencing
In March 2012, a large number of posts broke out on the local forum in Changshu, all saying one thing - the beauty boss Gu Chunfang's local store was closed.
Subsequently, there was more and more online discussion.
At the same time, the Changshu Municipal Public Security Bureau has received reports one after another, saying that "Gu Chunfang has disappeared after borrowing a lot of money on the grounds of shortage of funds!" ”
As the number of people reported gradually increased, the police became aware that this could be a fund-raising scam. As the investigation unfolded, more and more evidence surfaced. What the police did not expect was that in just four years, Gu Chunfang illegally raised 1.77 billion yuan from the public in various fraudulent ways.
Before the incident, there were still 460 million yuan that could not be returned.
Whether it is the amount of money involved, the circumstances of the crime, this is a big case. At that time, the death penalty for fund-raising fraud was retained (now abolished).
As the case gradually became clearer, the police carried out a case investigation while grasping gu Chunfang's criminal evidence. With the full cooperation of the police, Gu Chunfang, who fled, was arrested and arrested. After the case was returned, the court finally pronounced a verdict and sentenced her to death with a two-year suspension of execution.
But in the face of a large amount of evidence, no one expected that Gu Chunfang was actually not convinced.
The reasons she gave were also very interesting, she said: "The borrowers are people they know, and they are not open to the public, and some of the money is not borrowed, but earned by themselves." ”
On this basis, she filed the above with the Jiangsu Provincial High People's Court. Is that really what she said?
Not to mention the amount of fraud, the target, just talk about her fraud methods. As mentioned earlier, she borrowed so much money by virtue of her fame.
In this process, Gu Chunfang is not just simply packaging herself.
The police also found many forged certificates and fake seals in her home and company. Moreover, his accomplices have repeatedly impersonated high-ranking officials to "borrow money" and abused the identity of others. Otherwise, how can an ordinary person who has no achievements in the business world say that he has to move those business giants to take money?
In the end, she began to advocate the domestic economic situation to ordinary people, and circled money from ordinary people in an almost brainwashing way.
All kinds of acts and various means, coupled with the large amount of fraud, fully meet the sentencing standards for the crime of fund-raising fraud, so the High People's Court rejected its claims and continued to uphold the original judgment.
At this point, Gu Chunfang completely woke up from this whirlpool of borrowing money. At the beginning, the "beautiful boss" who only wanted to borrow money to solve the problem of capital turnover, under the temptation of money, pushed herself step by step into the abyss and could not extricate herself.
Greed brewed this tragedy.
For those who have been deceived, money has been lost and alarm bells have been sounded. Where is the pie in the sky? The annual interest rate is as high as 30%, or even 40%, if there is such a good thing, it is still their turn?
But under the influence of greed, too many people choose to take risks. Only when things reach the point of irreparability can we fully awaken.