Li Guangming, a full media reporter of Legal Daily
With a clear sound of the hammer, the much concerned case of Xie Liuqing's criminal group fraud was settled.
On May 22, the Intermediate People's Court of Wuhu City, Anhui Province publicly sentenced Xie Liuqing to 15 years' imprisonment for fraud and a fine of 15 million yuan; 43 defendants, including Liu Yanfang, were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from 12 years to six months of detention, and were also fined; 11 defendants who committed minor crimes, including Chen Dan, were exempted from criminal punishment, and 8 defendants, including Wang Mengge, who committed significant minor crimes and did little harm, were acquitted.
Since 2012, criminal groups with Xie Liuqing as the leader have taken one or more combined and progressive sales routines, such as limited scarcity of fictional products, authoritative distribution, famous works, fake auction houses, promised buybacks, co buying investments, false holding, etc., under the guise of the company, with the so-called "collections" of fictional value or appreciation space as bait, through division of labor and cooperation Cooperate with each other, set up sets at different levels, lure the victims step by step to buy products and carry out fraud. Many victims in nearly 20 provinces (districts and cities), such as Anhui, Heilongjiang, Beijing, Inner Mongolia, were defrauded of more than 16.7 million yuan in total, resulting in many victims' ruin, high debts, divorce and even desperate situation.
Xie Liuqing's fraud criminal group sells "collectibles" in the company's business model, which is very deceptive, hidden and harmful. By deconstructing its fraud routines, people can better understand the deception of such crimes to prevent being cheated.
Interlocking
The victim can't extricate himself from the fraud routine
"Unexpectedly, I bought souvenirs just once through watching TV commercials, and got entangled. Under the temptation of sales consultants, I kept buying the 'collections' of CICC recommended by them until I found out that I had been cheated. Unfortunately, it was too late now, and many people had been cheated out of their homes and their lives were in trouble." Many victims who were defrauded by Xie Liuqing's fraud group recalled their experiences of being defrauded, as if they had a lingering nightmare.
Qin Moulong, the victim, said in his statement that he had bought the porcelain bottles of CICC on the Internet. Soon after that, he was contacted by a sales consultant who claimed to be CICC to promote various so-called "collections". The "collections" were created by masters, limited in quantity, scarce, with high collection value and several times or even dozens of times of appreciation space, luring him to buy them.
"Sometimes when I hesitate to sell 'collections' or say I don't have money to buy them, someone who calls himself an auction house will contact me, saying that the auction house is going to hold an auction, asking me if I have any relevant' collections' in my hands, and telling me the price of these 'collections' that can be auctioned. The so-called' collections' are the products that have been sold to me before, trying to exaggerate the value of the collection At the same time, they will also offer to help me arrange the auction and urge me to borrow money and buy with loans. " Qin Moulong said, however, when people who really look for these auction houses ask for an auction, they will find various reasons to evade, and finally they simply cannot contact them.
Where do these victims know? These are just some part of the fraud routine of Xie Liuqing's criminal group. In order to carry out fraud, the criminal group designed a set of deceptive and demagogic fraud routines, which are interlinked with each other. The victim has no ability to parry at all. It seems that he has walked into a maze, and it is difficult to extricate himself from the fraud routine. Finally, he was cheated out of money, and even sold his house and borrowed high interest loans to buy.
This set of deception focuses on tricking customers (victims) to buy "collections", and designs "scripts" system and fraud process. The external sales of "collections" are unified in the name of "Beijing Zhongjin Collection". The company (criminal group) has set up a personnel department, a planning department, a wiring department, a bill checking department, a marketing department, a quality inspection department and other departments to cooperate with each other and carry out fraud. First, through the collected information, the purchasing power and collection interests of customers are classified and tracked in detail; Then, according to the "script" program of criminal group training, customer service personnel will start from cultivating the so-called "feelings" with customers to gain customer trust, promote "collections" through telephone marketing and WeChat chat, and brainwash the victims repeatedly with conventional fraud and false scripts that are scarce, have collection value, and can quickly rise in value; If the conventional means of fraud fail, when the customer is hesitant, the customer service personnel will use special means such as promised repurchase or help auction, falsely claiming to buy together, and pretending to be a foreign auction house to break the customer's psychological defense line, strengthen the victim's purchase will, and finally achieve the purpose of luring the customer to buy. In this process, each department of the criminal group has a clear division of labor and cooperates with each other in the implementation of fraud, forming a set of "routine" fraud processes that are interlinked, step-by-step and indispensable.
"The company's' script 'is edited by the Planning Department, which mainly introduces the author of the' collection 'with superb skills, high social status and prestige, which reflects the scarcity and high collection value, making customers feel that they can invest and sell at a high price in the future." The director of the second customer service department of the criminal group, Chang, said in his statement that the special script used by the customer service is "quota grabbing" The company requires each customer service department to prepare several mobile phones from other places and put them in the department director's place at ordinary times for customer service personnel to imitate their counterparts from other places to call customers, to impersonate their counterparts from other places, and to impersonate the auction house personnel from other places to quote high prices. As far as I know, the company has never bought back or helped customers auction their collections. "
The statement of the customer service supervisor confirmed the routine of the criminal group's fraud.
In order to facilitate the implementation of fraud and escape investigation and attack, Xie Liuqing has successively set up several companies in Zhengzhou, Beijing and other places in the name of others, and sold them in the name of "Beijing Zhongjin Collection". He intentionally concealed the actual business location of the company and other true situations, and did not issue invoices to the victims in the name of the company; Conceal the true information of employees, do not sign labor contracts with employees in the name of CICC Dingsheng, or even use Magic Voice mobile phones, and use pseudonyms to deceive victims; To deal with "problem customers" by using "verbal skills" to delay the return of goods and blackmail customers, so that the victims have no way to return goods and protect their rights, and finally achieve the purpose of illegal possession of the victims' property.
mix the spurious with the genuine
Fictitious Facts Package Popular Goods as "Collections" to Make Big Money
Although Xie Liuqing's criminal group designed a seemingly seamless fraud routine, some victims were not easily fooled at the beginning.
In addition to the eloquent "talking skills" of the customer service personnel, there are also some deceptions of "seeing is believing" and "collections" of fake goods that destroy the final defense line of these victims.
The victim, Li Mouzhi, said in his statement that when a sales consultant of CICC who called himself "Li Bing" began to sell products to him, he didn't believe it very much. At the invitation of "Li Bing", he and his wife went to Shandong to attend the exhibition held by the descendants of Qi Baishi. "Li Bing" was present to receive them, which convinced him that CICC was a formal company. Shortly thereafter, "Li Bing" invited him to attend the exhibition for the 120th anniversary of Xu Beihong's birth held at the Bird's Nest in Beijing. At the exhibition, "Li Bing" recommended him a set of "Cultural Revolution Treasures Collection" stamps, saying that the market price was 34 million yuan, and the preferential price for the exhibition was 168000 yuan, He couldn't resist the temptation to buy a set by swiping his card on the spot.
Since then, Li Mouzhi believed in CICC deeply, and was cheated to spend about 2 million yuan to buy more than 100 "collections". Until the public security organs came to investigate the situation, they knew they had been cheated. In addition to the money saved at home, most of it was borrowed by Li Mouzhi. Now the house is also mortgaged in the bank. Unfortunately, he died on the day when Xie Liuqing was sentenced in the second trial of the criminal syndicate case.
Finding celebrity platforms and using celebrity effects to improve credibility is a common trick of many fraud companies. Xie Liuqing's criminal group is no exception. CICC often holds some exhibitions in Beijing and invites some well-known athletes, movie stars, famous painting and calligraphy artists and other well-known people to participate in activities. It is easy to make people illusion that "these celebrities are coming, and their 'collections' should be genuine".
In fact, what you see may not be the truth, but what confuses the victim more is the so-called "collections" that are false or false.
Xu Mouyun sells porcelain plate paintings, porcelain, etc. in Jingdezhen porcelain market in Jiangxi Province. He said in his testimony that Xie Liuqing took a fancy to an ordinary porcelain plate painting "Misty Clouds over the Lake Mountain" sold in his shop and asked him to produce it in batch. Therefore, the painting of the product "Misty Clouds over the Lake Mountain" was hand-painted by different painters in assembly line operations, and Zhan's signature was printed. "The final finished product, Mr. Xie (Xie Liuqing), was handed to Zhan to check and sign on the supervision and creation certificates."
In the same way, Xu Mouyun also produced a porcelain plate painting of Good Luck for Xie Liuqing at his request.
At the same time, Xie Liuqing also took a fancy to the porcelain plate paintings in the shop next to Xu Mouyun. Wu Mousong, the owner of the shop, said in his testimony that Xie Liuqing liked the porcelain plate painting "Blossoming Rich" and the porcelain vase "Auspicious Snow bodes good year" sold in his shop, and customized about 300. Also produced by Wu Mousong, Xie Liuqing asked Zhan Mou to supervise the production and issue a signature certificate. "Zhan doesn't participate in the production of products. He didn't come to me to discuss the production of products."
In this way, the so-called "three wonders of pastel painting" composed of these three porcelain plate paintings with landscape themes has become a rare "collection", and its value has risen a hundred times. According to the sales promotion of the customer, a buyer in Guangzhou spent 678000 yuan.
"I only designed the pattern of this porcelain plate painting, but I didn't make it. I slightly improved the color and composition of these three works and handed them over to them for production. The original version came from outside. I didn't participate in the production process. I didn't know how things were made, where they were made, or what process. The name on the creation certificate was signed by me, and the seal was also stamped by me." In his testimony, Mr. Zhan said that the original versions of the three porcelain plate paintings were in Huayang style, "Huayang is a ceramic market here, and we call it" street goods ", things sold at roadside stalls".
Zhan also said in his testimony that there is no room for appreciation of the "three wonders of pastel", which are produced by hundreds of thousands in batches and have low artistic value. They are just for ordinary people to buy and look at, and are not in the collection range.
Let ordinary assembly line operations, mass-produced street goods and street goods become masterpieces and rare and limited "collections". It is not enough here. There will also be a series of dazzling operations in the sales link, false packaging of the author, fiction of the collection value and appreciation space of "collections", and so on.
The court found out that Xie Liuqing's criminal group fabricated the value or appreciation space of its products in the following ways: the author, production process, auction records, library collection records, etc.; the certificate of authorization, supervision, production, identification, anti-counterfeiting, etc.; and the author's reputation, title, achievements, etc. Xie Liuqing and others asked the master to sign on the printed product certificate and pretend to be his work. At the same time, Xie Liuqing arranged the planning department personnel to make up the auction price of the master's work, or make up that the work has been collected by a museum, so that the victim mistook the product for the master's production, which has high collection value and appreciation space.
"Some of the authors of calligraphy and painting are just ordinary painters or amateurs. Xie Liuqing packaged them and claimed that they were false titles such as the vice president of the Chinese Painting Research Institute and Xu Beihong's reincarnation disciple. He made up that his works were collected by Yongjiu Museum, such as Beijing Capital Museum and Tokyo National Museum, and dozens of authoritative media interviewed him. His works were sold for hundreds of thousands of yuan Let the victim believe that the painter's works have high collection value and appreciation space. " There is evidence that the two paintings are only worth about 200 yuan, but their actual sales price is up to more than 600000 yuan, 3000 times the difference between the two. Some so-called "masters" and other celebrities are all packaged by Xie Liuqing's criminal group.
What's more funny is that after Xie Liuqing's criminal syndicate was investigated, an author who had been packaged as a "master" was already struggling to survive by setting up a stall to sell paintings in Beijing. When the procuratorial organ found him for investigation and evidence collection, he was farming in his hometown.
According to the survey, the "collections" used by Xie Liuqing's criminal group to defraud were basically produced in this way, from hundreds of thousands of yuan of street stall goods to masterpieces, whose value soared tens of times to thousands of times, laying the foundation for the group to commit fraud.
Fairness and justice
Convicted criminals must not be allowed to go unpunished
"I am a doorman with a monthly salary of about 2000 yuan. CICC customer service 'tricked' me into buying 'collections', spent all my savings, and bought them with a house mortgage loan. Now the house has been sold to repay the loan, so I can only rent a house." The victim Chen Moujin, a resident of Fanyang Town, Fanchang District, Wuhu City, Anhui Province, said that his son cannot take care of himself because of his low IQ, I heard from the customer service that how "collections" can make a lot of money. I want to buy them and leave the money to my son after auction.
There are not a few victims like Chen Moujin who bought "collections" with the intention of becoming rich. Many of them were cheated into penniless and debt ridden. Their savings were defrauded, their houses were mortgaged, and some of them were separated from their families or even died with hatred.
On the contrary, Xie Liuqing's criminal group "earned" a lot. As the leader of the criminal group and the actual controller of each company, Xie Liuqing needless to say. Other members of the criminal group have also obtained a huge amount of ill gotten gains according to their positions and division of labor. Liu Yanfang, the general manager of the company, said that she received about 700000 yuan in 2015 and more than 2 million yuan in 2016.
"The commission of the director is 1% of the sales performance of the whole department. I have been the director since 2015, with an annual income of more than 300000 yuan. One year's income is more than 500000 yuan, with an average annual income of more than 400000 yuan." Liu, director of Customer Service Department II, confessed.
In addition to the customer service personnel who mainly take sales commissions, about 1 million yuan can earn more than 100000 yuan, and even the door-to-door delivery staff earn a lot of money. Zhu Mouen, the delivery clerk, confessed that the minimum monthly guarantee was 2750 yuan, and there was a commission for delivery, which was about 7000 or 8000 yuan per month. In addition, door-to-door sales could also get a commission.
After being found cheated, on October 27, 2016, the victim Chen reported to the Chengguan Police Station of Fanchang County Public Security Bureau. After the case was filed and investigated by the public security organ, the crime of fraud committed by Xie Liuqing's criminal group surfaced. During the investigation, prosecution and trial, victims from all over the country reported cases, involving nearly 20 provinces (districts and cities) such as Anhui, Heilongjiang, Sichuan, Beijing and Inner Mongolia, with the amount of fraud up to 16.7 million yuan.
On August 15, 2018, the People's Procuratorate of Fanchang County filed a public prosecution to the People's Court of Fanchang County, accusing 63 people, including the defendant Xie Liuqing, of committing fraud. On February 1 and March 12, 2021, the People's Court of Fanchang County decided that 21 people, including Xie Liuqing and Liu Yanfang, were guilty in the first instance and 42 people were acquitted.
After the judgment of first instance, the People's Procuratorate of Fanchang District, Wuhu City filed a protest and 21 defendants filed an appeal. After the second instance was filed and the case was tried, the procuratorial organ guided the public security organ to supplement a large amount of evidence. During the second instance, Wuhu Municipal People's Procuratorate submitted 66 files, supplemented with a large number of written, electronic, audio-visual and other evidence.
From December 1, 2021 to January 20, 2022, Wuhu Intermediate People's Court held a public hearing to hear the case. The trial lasted 40 days, with 2 victim litigation representatives, 60 original defendants and more than 100 defenders participating in the trial.
During the trial of the second instance, someone saw a defense team composed of more than 100 lawyers and said with emotion that each defendant basically hired two lawyers, which was not seen in other cases. How much financial resources and lawyers' fees are needed!
On May 22, 2024, Wuhu Intermediate People's Court sentenced 63 people including Xie Liuqing in the second instance of the case of fraud protest and appeal. The court held that Xie Liuqing and others organized and implemented several fraud activities for the purpose of illegal possession, and their acts constituted the crime of fraud. The number of participants in this case is large, the main members are stable, the organization is tight, and the division of labor is clear, forming a criminal group with Xie Liuqing as the leader, Liu Yanfang and Zhang Hongfang as the principal offenders, and other participants as ordinary members. According to the facts and evidence ascertained, the court made the aforesaid judgment in accordance with the law, taking into account the facts, nature, circumstances and confession and repentance of each defendant's crime.
It is worth noting that 34 of the 42 defendants who were acquitted in the first trial verdict were changed to guilty; Liu Mouting and other four people were sentenced to three years' imprisonment after pleading guilty and pleading guilty in the first instance and being sentenced to probation.
"We adhere to the criminal policy of combining punishment with leniency, pay attention to distinguishing the nature and circumstances of the case, and adhere to the whole case investigation, comprehensive measurement, and careful weighing. When strict, strict, and when lenient, lenient. On the basis of the first trial verdict, Xie Liuqing, the leading member of the criminal group, has been given an additional two-year imprisonment, and other principal offenders have also been given an appropriate increase in punishment; some accomplices have appropriately reduced their punishment, or have been given a suspended sentence; Eleven were exempted from criminal punishment and eight were acquitted. " The judge of the collegial panel explained that the principle of no additional punishment on appeal is an important principle of criminal proceedings, that is, in the criminal case appealed by the defendant, the court of appeal shall not increase the punishment of the defendant, so as to ensure that the defendant exercises the right of appeal according to law, so as to facilitate the correct handling of the case. The Criminal Procedure Law of our country stipulates that the people's court of second instance shall not increase the punishment of the defendant when hearing the case appealed by the defendant or his legal representative, defender or close relatives. However, if a People's Procuratorate protests or a private prosecutor appeals, the restrictions specified in the preceding paragraph shall not apply. After the verdict of the first instance of the case was pronounced, the procuratorial organ protested the whole case. Both the prosecution and the defense have provided a large amount of new evidence. The court of second instance, through the court trial and cross examination of evidence, determined that the case constituted a fraud crime group according to law, and added some defendants to be identified as constituting a fraud crime, and changed the sentence according to law, which is in line with the law.
With the final trial of the second instance of Xie Liuqing's criminal group fraud case, the controversy surrounding this new type of crime will also come to an end. This kind of crime targets the middle-aged and the elderly, swindles the unspecified public, repeatedly induces the victim to buy the product involved, or repeatedly sells to the same victim, even knows that the victim's family situation is poor and needs to borrow money, but still continues to swindle them, so that many victims have built up debts and sold houses to repay debts, which has brought serious harm to the family and society. The trial of cases in accordance with the law has safeguarded fairness and justice.
It is expected that this case will bring people to wake up, so that those who are still lucky will rein in and stay away from fraud.