THE Longgang police recently busted a real-estate fraud gang and arrested four suspects who allegedly lured homeowners into giving them carte blanche in housing transactions and used illegal means to manipulate the real estate for profit, the Shenzhen Evening News reported Saturday.

In April 2018, being short on cash, a female homeowner surnamed Liu found a real estate agency in Buji Subdistrict, Longgang District, and entrusted the agency to sell her 85-square-meter apartment.

However, she has not received any housing payments after she signed a contract with a buyer and received a deposit of 40,000 yuan (US$5,825) in July.

Liu went to check the status of her apartment at the end of November, but found that she had already personally transferred the property to a housing agent, who mortgaged her apartment in October.

The apartment was sealed by the court in November. Realizing that she might have been cheated by the agency, Liu immediately called the police.

The Luogang Police Station launched an investigation soon after receiving the report. It was found that the agency’s corporate representative, surnamed Li, had taken advantage of homeowners’ eagerness to sell their properties and lured them into giving the agency full authorization in the housing transactions.

Without notifying the homeowners, Li used the housing contracts and copies of the owners’ certificates and other materials to borrow money from bonding companies, used the loans to pay off the sellers’ mortgage loans and deal with other formalities, and then mortgaged the properties with banks to get consumer loans.

According to the News, a small portion of the money was used as a down payment to the cash-strapped homeowners and another portion was used for the transaction costs and the agents’ salaries, while the vast majority was pocketed by Li.

The Longgang police arrested Li and three other suspects Dec. 29, 2018. Between September 2017 and the end of 2018, the gang had manipulated more than 20 apartments.

When the fraud was exposed, Li hadn’t made a fortune on the illegal business and owed a total of 30 million yuan to the bonding companies and banks.

It was preliminarily verified that six homeowners had been swindled, and the Longgang police are still looking for other victims of the fraud. The four suspects have been detained.

(Zhang Yu)