AN unemployed man was recently caught by Futian police for allegedly cheating 11 families out of 800,000 yuan (US$118,474) by promising to get their children admitted to schools through his connections.

The man, surnamed Wang, had alleged been using various fake ID cards over the past year to evade punishment.

Last Sept. 27, a father, surnamed Chen, reported to the Lianhua Police Station that in July he had been introduced by a colleague to a man surnamed Huang who claimed to be able to acquire slots at certain popular primary and middle schools through his connections with the schools’ headmasters. However, he told Chen that parents would need to pay him different commissions depending on the reputation of the school they wanted their children in.

A total of 11 families solicited Huang’s help, giving him 800,000 yuan. They didn’t realize that they had been cheated until the new semester started and they still hadn’t received any admission notices.

A police investigation uncovered that Huang was using a fake ID and had no address.

In October last year, police officers found a clue that Huang had once been investigated in 2007 for his alleged involvement in a similar case in Lianhuabei. Police checked all similar cases in the city in 2007 and out of the thousands of cases they identified a man surnamed Wang, as the person best fitting the descriptions of Huang made by the victims.

The victims later confirmed that Wang was the fraudster, and the police record showed that Wang had been involved in two other contract scams in Qingyuan, totalling 3.4 million yuan. Wang has been wanted by the Qingyuan police for a long time, but they never were able to ascertain his address as he was using fake IDs.

Police estimated that Wang would start scamming again during the summer examination and enrollment season and police started to visit the banks under its jurisdiction.

On July 6, a police officer noticed a familiar figure walking towards him at a bank outlet he was visiting. Without hesitation, the police officer brought Wang to the ground and seized around 90,000 yuan that had just been cheated out of another victim. Police also found various bankcards and IDs that Wang had used in his scams.

The investigation revealed that Wang had been involved in a dozen scams. (Han Ximin)