Li Moubo used low thresholds, high wages, and high treatment as bait to attract workers who wanted to go abroad to work, falsely claiming that he only needed to provide ID cards and passports, and the company was responsible for background packaging, defrauding more than 260 victims of nearly 10 million yuan in less than three months.
Promises do not result in refunds
Migrant workers abroad claim to have zero thresholds
In April 2019, 55-year-old Lao Huang decided to go abroad to work, and he saw an advertisement on the Internet called "Beijing Xingsheng Hongtai Labor Dispatch Co., Ltd." (hereinafter referred to as Xingsheng Hongtai Company), and added the other party's WeChat according to the contact information in the advertisement. The other party claimed to be the manager of the company and promised to handle the work abroad, but Lao Huang was not at ease, and also sent a photo of the company's business license to Lao Huang. Lao Huang saw the four words "labor dispatch" on the license, and his heart was a little more secure, but for the sake of insurance, he decided to visit the company to see the situation.
Xingsheng Hongtai Company is located in a high-end office building in Beijing, surrounded by convenient transportation and dense crowds, and there is a special person to receive Lao Huang as soon as you enter the building. The salesman in the company constantly answers the visiting phone and is very busy with work. In order to reassure Lao Huang, Li Moubo, the manager in charge of the interview, also processed a refund in front of Lao Huang, and very happily returned the money to the person who failed to apply for a visa.
These scenes made Lao Huang's hanging heart completely down-to-earth, so he explained his situation to Li Moubo a little nervously: 55 years old, working as a carpenter with the contractor team, without relevant certificates, and never went abroad.
However, what Lao Huang did not expect was that Li Moubo said cheerfully that foreign languages and certificates are not a problem, and the company will package the customer's background materials, and the processing period is 60 to 90 working days, and if it is not successful, it will be fully refunded.
Finally, under the guidance of Li Moubo, Lao Huang and Xingsheng Hongtai Company signed the "Labor Expatriation Contract", agreeing to pay an application fee of 1,500 yuan and a migrant visa application fee of 32,000 yuan. Correspondingly, the company promised to provide Lao Huang with a general worker position in a certain country, with a monthly salary of 36,000 yuan. Looking forward to a high-paying job, Lao Huang handed over his hard-earned savings to the other party and happily returned to his hometown to wait for a visa.
Suddenly people go to empty buildings
The salesman was also blinded
After returning to his hometown, Lao Huang waited left and right, and received not a notice from the company informing him of the issuance of the visa, but a contact number of the police. On the phone, the people warned that Lao Huang had encountered fraud, Li Moubo and others had absconded with money, and many people were deceived.
It turned out that in July 2019, the Fangshan Branch of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau received a police call, the informant said that he had paid 33,500 yuan in Xingsheng Hongtai Company to apply for a visa to work abroad, but the visa had not been successful.
In addition, several salesmen of Xingsheng Hongtai Company also reported the case to the public security organs. These salesmen all said that on July 1, 2019, the company's manager said that there was no need to handle overseas labor services to Australia for the time being, and all personnel had a week off after settling wages, and the specific working time would be notified separately. As a result, before he was notified to go to work, Li Moubo, who was in charge of visa processing, lost contact, and many customers reported the case, only to find that the company had even emptied its computers, and this fraud case involving nearly 300 people across the country immediately surfaced.
After investigation, the company's salesmen were basically recruited by Li Moubo to work in Xingsheng Hongtai Company in April 2019, and until the case, the working hours of several people had not reached the visa processing time limit of "60-90 working days". The salesman said that their main work content is to publish advertisements for migrant workers on the Internet, introduce the brief situation of migrant workers to customers according to the mantra provided by Li Moubo, and invite customers to the company to learn the details. When asked whether Xingsheng Hongtai Company had the ability to apply for visas for overseas workers for customers, the salesman said that the visa processing materials were managed by Manager Li, and he was responsible for following up the visa progress, and he had sent photos of successful visa applications in the WeChat group.
Procurators handle cases in a down-to-earth manner
Breaking the "Zero Confession"
In the late evening of February 20, 2022, on the side of a park road in Handan City, Hebei Province, the police set up a card to conduct alcohol tests on the drivers of passing vehicles. When he was uniformed by the police for investigation, he confided that the reason why he drunk and drove was because he was suspected of fraud and was chased and fled online, and he was depressed in hiding. After verification, the drunk driving man was Li Moubo, who had absconded for three years.
On May 31, 2022, the public security organ transferred the case to the Fangshan District Procuratorate in Beijing for review and prosecution on suspicion of fraud and dangerous driving.
After arriving at the case, Li refused to admit guilt, arguing that he was just an ordinary worker, not responsible for visa processing, did not participate in the sharing of stolen goods, did not receive much money, and denied subjective intention of illegal possession. "But when faced with questions such as why he used a pseudonym to work for the company, how the company specifically applied for a migrant worker visa for its clients, where the customer information it collected went, who successfully applied for a migrant visa, why the contract money was received by the accountant's personal account, and why the company fled for three years after the accident, he was vague and did not dare to answer positively." Pan Hongmei, procurator of the First Procuratorial Department of the Fangshan District Procuratorate in Beijing, said.
The Prosecutor discusses the merits of the case.
"Based on the current situation, I am prepared for two things, on the one hand, I will continue to investigate and fill in the gaps and consolidate the chain of evidence, and on the other hand, I will make full preparations before the trial to expose the defendants' lies one by one through strategic interrogation, evidence and debate." Pan Hongmei told reporters that in response to Li Moubo's subjective defense that there was no intention to defraud, the case-handling team carefully sorted out the statements of the victims and witness testimony in the case, and guided the investigating authorities to investigate and verify the business qualifications of Xingsheng Hongtai Company, and found that the company not only did not have the formal qualifications to handle overseas labor dispatch, but also the company's legal representative denied that the company carried out relevant business in Fangshan, and Li Moubo fraudulently used the company's name to carry out business activities to the outside world.
In addition, when Li Moubo knew that he could not apply for a visa for others to go abroad, he also recruited salesmen, arranged to organize salesmen to conduct business, interviewed those who were interested in working abroad and promised salary and treatment and visas, and when he encountered customers who had doubts about fees, he stabilized the other party by first reducing the price and then making up the balance, which can prove that he subjectively has the intention to defraud others of money.
On March 31, 2022, after review, the Fangshan District Procuratorate found that Li Moubo subjectively had the intention of illegally occupying other people's property, objectively committed the fact that he could help others apply for visas for migrant workers abroad, and his behavior was suspected of fraud, so it made a decision to approve his arrest in accordance with the law. On June 30, the court took the case to the Fangshan District Court. On 24 August, the court heard the case.
The prosecutor appeared in court to support the prosecution.
In court, the prosecutor carefully designed the outline, throwing a series of questions to Li Moubo, such as why he used a false name to work as a manager in the company, why he fraudulently used the business license of another company to carry out business activities, and why he never successfully applied for a visa for a customer to work abroad. At the same time, the order of evidence presentation was planned in an orderly manner, and the progress was carried out layer by layer, laying a solid foundation for determining that Li Moubo's behavior constituted the crime of fraud. In the end, after the trial, the court all accepted the facts and charges charged by the procuratorate and the sentencing recommendations made.
On May 31, 2023, the verdict in the case was announced, and the court sentenced Li Moubo to 13 years and six months in prison and fined him 135,000 yuan for fraud. On June 1, Li filed an appeal. On August 24, the Fangshan District Procuratorate received a final ruling from the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate Court, rejecting Li's appeal and upholding the original verdict.
"This type of fraud has several very obvious characteristics, one is that most of them are carried out through the Internet, and the victims are all over the country; The second is to commit fraud by creating a very formal appearance for the victim to have a very formal company qualification; Third, almost all are short-term fraud crimes, generally after the expiration of the processing time limit, when the victim discovers that he has not done it and begins to inquire and suspect that he has been deceived, the criminal suspect has already fled. Pan Hongmei summarized the characteristics of such scams afterwards and reminded job seekers to keep their eyes open, especially vigilant against the need to pay fees in advance.
Source: Procuratorial Daily
Process Editor: TF022