SHENZHEN police have busted multiple loan scam rings involving hundreds of millions of yuan so far this year, and a total of 133 suspects have been criminal detained.

A woman surnamed Long was one of the victims.

Long, who needed cash for her business, got to know a man surnamed Tang who claimed to work for a small loan company last September.

Long wanted to borrow 500,000 yuan (US$79,491) from Tang’s company. Tang produced blank contracts and a mortgage contract for Long to sign, saying that the blank contracts would conceal her other debt liabilities and hence help speed up the processing of her loan application, and she signed them.

After Long’s application was approved, Tang withheld 300,000 yuan on the excuse of needing to pass bank cash-flow checks and demanded another 190,000 yuan from Long to pay deposits and service fees. Long ended up getting only 7,500 yuan in hand.

When Long went to the loan company to inquire, the company made a counter-charge, demanding Long pay back the 500,000-yuan loan as she had violated the contract by hiding her debt liabilities.

More than 40 people in Longgang District were also scammed in a similar way. Police detained 39 suspects at a car dealership in Henggang Subdistrict this April for cheating car buyers through a zero-down-payment scheme for car mortgages.

In another case, a man surnamed Zheng in Luohu District borrowed 50,000 yuan in November 2016 from a man surnamed Ou, who had claimed to be an employee of a small loan company. Ou promised Zheng the loan after Zheng signed a mortgage contract for his 9-million-yuan apartment. Zheng got 20,000 yuan after Ou deducted the deposit, interest and service fees using different excuses.

Two months later, Zheng contacted Ou to help him secure more loans to pay back the previous loan, and Zheng borrowed another 140,000 yuan. Between November 2016 and July 2017, Zheng took out seven loans through Ou. Zheng called the police after the suspects threatened to repossess his apartment in court.

Zheng became 2.2 million yuan in debt to the suspects in eight months, although he actually received only 179,000 yuan from the company.

According to the police, this type of scam is deceptive as it uses the disguise of private lending. It is treated as an organized crime that targets people with apartments who are in need of cash, and creates evidence in their favor in the contracts. They even use violence to force the victims to fall into their trap. (Han Ximin)