‘Good-looking, good at pretending’: Married woman in China hires actors to play relatives at ‘weddings’ to con three men out of RM430,902; gets strong reactions online

A woman in China has been charged with fraud after faking three marriages and cheating the men involved in them out of 660,000 yuan (RM430,902 or US$92,000).

The 35-year-old, surnamed Zhou, from eastern China’s Jiangsu province, was legally married and had a daughter when she began dating other men.

She met her three prospective “husbands”, whose surnames are Luo, Zhang, and Xu, at work or online and managed to hide the relationships from her real husband, who was running a business and seldom at home.

Zhou gave them a false name and dated them for a few months, before asking them to marry her.

To avoid officially registering the marriages, she lied about her house being demolished and needing to stay single to receive government compensation. However, she suggested having a wedding ceremony to collect the gifts and money.

At the ceremonies all the relatives and friends from her side were actors she had hired and she continued to hire some of them to visit the homes as guests in the years that followed.

When Zhou was with one husband, she told the others she was travelling for training with the company she worked for.

Zhang Xueting, assistant prosecutor at the Nanjing Lishui People’s Procuratorate, told Jiangsu Television that Zhou was “good-looking and good at pretending”.

Zhou conned the three men out of 660,000 yuan (RM430,902 or US$92,000) in total.

Last year, Zhou attempted to swindle more money from Zhang, one of her “husbands”, and told him she was going to give birth to his twins – a boy and a girl.

She told Zhang she was giving birth at her parents’ home in another city, and sent him pictures of pregnancy check-up results and newborn babies she had downloaded online.

When Zhang asked to see the babies after they were “born”, Zhou hired a new actor to play the role of doctor.

It was when the fake doctor met Zhang and his mother at the hospital but failed to answer their questions that the duped man finally realised something was wrong.

After carrying out a background check on Zhou and discovering she was legally married, Zhang called the police.

The local procuratorate then filed a criminal charge against Zhou. She faces a minimum of 10 years in prison for fraud because of the large sum of money involved.

After learning what she did, Zhou’s legal husband divorced her in April.

When the story ran on social media it attracted some strong opinions.

“Her husband runs his business outside, she runs her business at home,” said one online observer.

“Even television dramas do not have a plot like this,” said another on Weibo.

“She could have achieved something great if she had used this ability somewhere else,” commented a third.

In August, police investigated a woman from northern China’s Shanxi province who was said to have cheated five men out of 220,000 yuan (RM143,646 or US$30,000) through fake engagements and weddings since 2018. – South China Morning Post