A MAN sought out personal connections in the hope of helping his son escape from being put behind bars, but was instead trapped in a fraud and swindled out of nearly 6 million yuan (US$872,511), the Southern Metropolis Daily reported.

The man, identified as Xu Jun, and his son, identified as Xu Min, were detained by police on suspicion of illegally absorbing public funds Nov. 11, 2015, and were arrested Dec. 18 that same year. Xu Jun was later granted bail pending trial due to a serious illness.

The judgment issued by the Luohu District People’s Court showed that Xu Min and Xu Jun had illegally absorbed more than 200 million yuan of public funds nationwide by using an investment platform as bait.

In order to help his son evade legal punishment, Xu Jun began to seek out personal connections and found a man surnamed Wang, who was an investor in one of his companies.

Xu Jun said it was Wang who had put forward the idea of finding some “leaders” in the public security department to help save his son. He recalled that Wang had started asking him for money on the grounds of “pulling strings” starting April 2016.

“I just wanted to get my son out of prison as soon as possible, so I didn’t think much about it,” Xu Jun was quoted as saying. Wang later introduced Xu Jun to a man surnamed Tan, who claimed to have connections with the public security department.

Xu Jun transferred 3 million yuan to Tan and was later introduced to another man identified as Lin Feng, who claimed to be the leader of the economic crime investigation bureau at the Ministry of Public Security.

According to Xu Jun, he paid a total of 5.71 million yuan to Wang, Tan and Lin between early 2016 and May 2017.

On May 10, 2017, Luohu District People’s Court convicted Xu Min and Xu Jun of illegally absorbing public deposits in the first trial. Xu Min was sentenced to five years in prison, while Xu Jun was sentenced to four years in jail.

It was at that time that Xu Jun realized he had been deceived. He reported Wang, Tan and Lin to the Longgang police June 9, 2017.

Seeing that the fraud had been uncovered, the families of Wang and Tan promised Xu that they would return all of the money, and signed a letter of commitment for the repayment, which obtained Xu Jun’s consent. The two families have so far returned more than 3 million yuan to Xu Jun.

The court retried the case May 3, 2018, and the charges were changed from illegally absorbing public deposits to illegal business operations. Xu Min was released from prison five months after the second trial. (Zhang Yu)