Wuchang a couple defrauded people by claiming that they could help them get into university. They also used the voice changing function on their magical sound mobile phones, pretending to be the Education Department Minister and the Dean of an Huake University College multiple times in order to increase the credibility of their scam. In this way, they defrauded 1.28 million yuan. Yesterday it was learned that the Hongshan District Court sentenced the couple in the first trial to 15 years and 8 years imprisonment respectively.
The 32 year old woman Zhang and her husband Wang lived in Wuchang. In April 2006, they met Mr and Mrs Meng through their cousin and Zhang recognized Mr Meng as her godfather. According to Wang's confession, since the film and television media company run by the couple was not doing very well, the couple decided to cheat people for money, with Zhang taking the lead and Wang backing her up.
Zhang then used forged property certificates and land use rights certificates to borrow 1.3 million yuan from Mr Meng. In 2008, Mr Meng's son took the college entrance examination but did not perform well. Upon hearing this, Zhang claimed that she had good relations with the Education Department Minister and Dean Shao of a Huake University College and could help young Mr Meng enroll in Huake University. Mr Meng was very interested and Zhang took advantage of this situation to ask for money many times, sometimes directly asking for it and other times using a voice-changing mobile phone to call Mr Meng, claiming to be the Education Department Minister or Dean Shao and asking for hospitality fees and activity fees etc. Later, the matter of enrolling in university was dropped and Mr Meng did not investigate further. Zhang then proposed other excuses such as helping young Mr Meng get a press card to continue cheating him.
In September 2007, Zhang called Mr Meng as Dean Shao, saying that the Ministry of Education inspection team was coming to Wuhan to inspect work and the Minister's wife had asked her to prepare some hospitality fees. Mr Meng believed her without doubt and sent 170,000 yuan in two installments to the account designated by Zhang. In March 2008, Zhang again pretended to be the Education Department Minister and borrowed 500,000 yuan from Mr Meng. Statistics showed that she defrauded 1.28 million yuan in 15 instances using similar methods.
It is understood that Mr Meng also suspected something was amiss and sought confirmation from Wang multiple times. Wang always swore that "the Minister is real, the College Dean is real, we are very familiar", and wrote a guarantee letter to Mr Meng, saying that all these were true.
On March 30 last year, when Mr Meng's wife was talking on the phone with Zhang, she felt that the voice on the phone sounded very much like the "Education Department Minister" and thus became alert, leading to the discovery of the case. Afterwards, Zhang returned 1.02 million yuan.
After reviewing the case, Hongshan court believed that Zhang and Wang committed a joint crime. Recently, Zhang was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for fraud and forging state organ documents, while Wang was sentenced to 8 years imprisonment for fraud. Both were also fined 80,000 yuan each.