When the police suddenly surrounded the courtyard of Sang Hongguo, a farmer in Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province (the people involved in the case in the text are pseudonyms, the same below), he felt very surprised.
The police opened the door on the west side of the courtyard, and a cold air rushed in, and it was actually a small cold storage. The police seized a large number of goods from this cold storage, and the goods in plastic bags and boxes looked like a yellow powder.
Sang Hongguo told the police that this was some chemical materials, the things of his son-in-law's friend, who rented their own warehouse to store these things.
Conspiracy with fellow inmates to make a "big deal"
Sang Hongguo's son-in-law is named Ma Hui, a person with a previous criminal record.
One day in the spring of 2019, Ma Hui and his former cellmate Li Weigang learned in a chat that the manufacture of K powder (generally referred to as ketamine, which is listed as the first type of psychotropic drug control) will use the main ingredient of a certain compound, and the production of the compound is relatively simple, as long as it is produced and sold to the drug production team, it may earn several times or even dozens of times the profit.
Before going to prison, Ma Hui had mixed in some entertainment venues, and he saw that there were many people who smoked K powder, and there were many people who spent thousands of dollars for K powder, so he thought that this was a "big deal" that came to money quickly.
Subsequently, Ma Hui told his friend Hu Hongliang about this "way to make money". The two hit it off and decided to pull a few people together to make a "big deal".
They then divided the work. Hu Hongliang was responsible for providing production technology, and Ma Hui found Li Weigang, who came forward to find a production site and was responsible for supervising production. Ma Hui also hired Xu Xiaochuan, a former technician at a chemical plant, as a technical guide.
Soon, Li Weigang found his friend Zhou Haoran in Lingshi County, Shanxi Province, and through the introduction of Zhou Haoran's friend Ren Yunhu, he rented the factory of Zhang Lin, the owner of a limited company in Jiexiu City, Shanxi Province, as a production den.
Ma Hui and Hu Hongliang illegally purchased 5.01 tons of state-controlled Class II precursors and other related raw materials from Liu Zhiqiang, manager of a chemical company in Shandong, at a price of 400,000 yuan.
In this den, they refine and process the raw materials to form a simple production line.
Hiding in the yard of his father-in-law's house
Initially, the finished products they produced were placed in a rented house in Lingshi County, Shanxi Province. But soon it's the end of the year, and workers are going home for the New Year, and they're worried about the risks. Therefore, Hu Hongliang and Ma Hui discussed where the goods should be placed to be safer.
Ma Hui said that there is a small warehouse in the yard of his father-in-law Sang Hong's country that has been empty, and if you put the "product" in that warehouse, it should be safe.
At the end of February 2020, Ma Hui, Hu Hongliang and others first went to Sang Hongguo's home and looked at the empty warehouse on the spot. They told Sang Hongguo that if they wanted to store a batch of chemical raw materials in it, they would pay rent.
The son-in-law and the son-in-law's friend wanted to rent the warehouse, and Sang Hongguo naturally agreed. After getting the permission, Ma Hui and his friends quickly delivered the things and gave Sang Hongguo some lease fees.
One day, Sang Hongguo suddenly smelled a bad smell emanating from the warehouse from time to time. Sang Hongguo asked Ma Hui what was in the warehouse, the smell was too big, and the neighbors around him had great opinions. Sang Hongguo asked Ma Hui to quickly pull things away.
Ma Hui discussed with Hu Hongliang that if the goods stored in the Sanghong country were removed and repeatedly upside down, the taste would be too large, and it would be easier to be discovered, attracting the attention of the public security department.
Sang Hongguo was pressed, so Hu Hongliang decided to go to the warehouse with Ma Hui to see the situation first. After inspecting, Ma Hui and Hu Hongliang suspected that a small part of the substance had been dehydrated by moisture and must be dealt with immediately.
Hu Hongliang proposed that if the large package of compounds is divided into small packets as soon as possible, made into vacuum packaging, and then frozen, it will not deteriorate, and the taste will be gone, but a cold storage needs to be built.
Hu Hongliang and Ma Hui discussed that it was the best plan to change Sang Hongguo's warehouse into a cold storage on the spot, and then put the packaged products inside and freeze them.
Therefore, Hu Hongliang immediately contacted a person who made a cold storage from the Internet, quickly changed the warehouse to a cold storage, and arranged for someone to buy a vacuum machine. Then, Hu Hongliang drove a small truck to first pull the "product" to the warehouse of his factory, and then sealed it with Ma Hui in the warehouse according to a 5 kg pack and vacuum machine.
They also bought several large plastic buckets, put some of the substances that had been deteriorated by moisture into plastic buckets, and sealed the mouth of the barrels.
After packing, they transported the items back to the cold storage of the Sanghong country and locked them. When you have the next home to buy, go and take it out.
It wasn't until the cold storage was seized by the police that Sang Hongguo learned that these things pulled by his son-in-law were raw materials for making drugs.
Nearly 2,800 kilograms of precursors were illegally produced
In fact, before the incident, the Tinghu Branch of the Yancheng City Public Security Bureau had already found clues related to the illegal manufacture, production and transportation of drug-making substances by Ma Hui and others in their work.
In January 2020, designated by the Yancheng Municipal Public Security Bureau, the Tinghu Branch and the Binhai County Public Security Bureau filed and investigated the case of Hu Hongliang and others suspected of illegally producing and trading drug-making substances. On July 15, 2020, the Binhai County Public Security Bureau transferred the case to the Tinghu Branch of the Yancheng Municipal Public Security Bureau for joint handling. The Yancheng Municipal Public Security Bureau formed a special case team to strictly investigate the case.
Through the investigation of personnel involved in production and trading, the police gradually locked the traces of Ma Hui and other personnel. Until June to August 2020, suspects Ma Hui, Li Weigang, Hu Hongliang and others were arrested and arrested.
After the suspect was arrested, the police handling the case conducted a search of Sanghong Country. The police seized 43 boxes of yellow powder in the cold storage of The Sang family, a total of 253 bags of yellow powder, a total of 1256.68 kg, and 6 barrels of solid-liquid mixture totaling 260.69 kg.
Case-handling personnel sealed and seized precursor drugs on the spot in accordance with law. (Image source: Courtesy of the interviewee)
The Yancheng Municipal Public Security Bureau Physical Evidence Laboratory identified that these seizures detected precursors to precursors. The judicial organs confirmed that from November 2019 to January 2020, Ma Hui and others illegally produced a total of 2723.67 kilograms of precursor drugs.
After investigation, the suspect Ma Hui has repeatedly colluded with Hu Hongliang, Li Weigang, Zhou Haoran, Qi Qiang, Wang Meng, Zhou Zhijie, and Xu Xiaochuan to sell a total of 1,470 kilograms of 58.8 pieces (each weighing 25 kilograms) of precursor drug items to others, and sold more than 20 million yuan in stolen money.
Among them, Hu Hongliang made a profit of 7.434 million yuan, Ma Hui made a profit of 6.9444 million yuan, Li Weigang made a profit of 2.9 million yuan, Zhou Haoran made a profit of 1.228 million yuan, Qi Qiang made a profit of 70,000 yuan, Wang Meng made a profit of 92,000 yuan, Zhou Zhijie made a profit of 2.1 million yuan, and Xu Xiaochuan made a profit of 500,000 yuan.
On November 2, 2020, the Yancheng Tinghu District Procuratorate filed a public prosecution in accordance with the law. On January 30, 2021, the Tinghu District Court of Yancheng City rendered a judgment on the case in accordance with the law, sentencing the defendants Ma Hui, Hu Hongliang and eight others for illegally producing, trading, and transporting drug-making substances. Among them, Ma Hui was sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment and fined 1 million yuan; Liu Zhiqiang was sentenced to nine years' imprisonment and fined 400,000 yuan; Hu Hongliang, Li Weigang, Xu Xiaochuan, Qi Qiang, and Wang Meng were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from 10 years and 6 months to 5 years, and fined.
The defendant did not appeal within the statutory time limit and the judgment took effect. This case is a drug-related case handled by the Tinghu District Procuratorate of Yancheng City in the past two years, with the largest number of people involved in the case and the largest number of drug-making items, and it has also been listed by the SPC as one of the top ten typical cases of drug crimes in 2021.
[Source: Fang Yuan (ID: fangyuanmagazine)]
From: China Anti-Drug Online webpage link