Information Times News (Reported by Huang Peng, Correspondent Xiong Xiaofei) - Witnessing his friend's extravagant spending habits, suspect Wu Mou gathered a few of his unsavory friends to kidnap him and demanded a ransom of 50,000 yuan in cash. However, the friend had no money to pay the ransom and sought help everywhere, eventually borrowing the money from Wu Mou himself. Recently, the Duanzhou police force in Zhaoqing acted decisively, apprehending all four suspects: Wu Mou, Du Mou, Zhang Mou, and Qiu Mou.
Friend Leads Police in Circles, Revealing Clues
At around 1 a.m. on June 30, in Duancheng, Zhaoqing, a disheveled man with multiple injuries on his face, supported by his friend Wu Mou, rang the alarm bell at the Jiaoyuan Police Station. The man claimed that his name was Chen Mou and recounted how, the previous night while having late-night snacks at a stall on Huangtang Road, three men suddenly confronted him, accusing him of seducing someone else’s wife. They then forcibly took him into a car at knifepoint and kidnapped him to a hotel in Dinghu District. During this time, they used violence to force him to pay a ransom of 50,000 yuan. He managed to gather the ransom from his friend Wu Mou and was subsequently released after handing it over to the kidnappers.
The police immediately launched an investigation. However, when the victim’s friend Wu Mou led the investigators to the scene, he seemed to have lost his memory and kept circling around Dinghu. A single sentence from the victim Chen Mou and Wu Mou’s unusual behavior raised doubts for the lead investigator. Chen Mou had said, "I was so dizzy I couldn’t walk, but my friend Wu Mou comforted me, saying 'Take a turn ahead, there’s a big banyan tree, where there are many people; we'll be safe once we get there.'" From this statement, it could be inferred that Wu Mou was very familiar with the terrain at the time and would not have forgotten it easily, indicating that Wu Mou must be involved.
After circling around Dinghu for more than four hours without finding the location where the victim was allegedly held hostage, Wu Mou returned to the police station with the investigators.
When questioned about the details of lending money to the victim Chen Mou, Wu Mou was unable to account for the whereabouts of the ATM withdrawal slips and eventually confessed to the fact that he had conspired with others to kidnap his friend and extort money.
Kidnapping a Friend and Paying the “Ransom”
It turned out that Wu Mou was an old friend of Chen Mou. Observing Chen Mou's generous spending habits, Wu Mou assumed he was wealthy and thus plotted with Du Mou, Zhang Mou, and Qiu Mou to kidnap Chen Mou and extort money. However, upon successfully kidnapping him, they realized that Chen Mou wasn't as rich as they thought. As Chen Mou called various friends to borrow the ransom, Wu Mou, being one of those friends, also received a plea for help. Instead of refusing, they devised another plan: Wu Mou would give Du Mou and the others 50,000 yuan first, and later ask Chen Mou to repay it gradually. Unfortunately, their scheme was uncovered by the police.
After Wu Mou was arrested, the police quickly apprehended the other three suspects based on his confession and recovered the "50,000 yuan in cash" used by Wu Mou to redeem the victim Chen Mou – which turned out to be several stacks of blank paper inside the envelope.