Chinese man makes $2 mn from fake institute

BEIJING - A Chinese man who raked in 16 million yuan (over $2 million) claiming to be a high-level government official at a fake training centre for civil servants has been charged with fraud and faces up to a life term in prison.

Zhang Ningquan, who called himself director general of the “China Scale Investigator Management Bureau”, has been charged with fraud and his case has been taken up at a court here in the Chinese capital.

Zhang, a high school graduate, set up his fake government agency in 2004 and rented an office at an old building that once housed the ministry of justice, located in downtown Beijing, Global Times reported Friday.

He claimed that his “bureau” was under the ministry of justice and that it trained employees for the ministry.

Zhang appointed employees with bogus titles like “political commissar” to make his “bureau” look legitimate, and equipped his employees with fake police badges and a uniform logo closely resembling a genuine government insignia, it said.

Zhang had set up seven branches of his fake bureau, promising job opportunities in civil services and collecting training fees from his victims.

More than 30 people handed over 1.4 million yuan ($205,065) to Zhang for the training programme between 2006 and 2008. Zhang also collected about 5.2 million yuan ($761,670) in local government fees to set up the branches and drove off with 41 cars worth 2.4 million yuan ($351,540) from an automaker in Zhejiang province, promising to promote the company as his bureau’s “designated car producer”.

Zhang was arrested in October 2008 and his trial is still going on. He faces up to 10 years or even a life term in prison if found guilty of earning extremely large amounts of money from a fraudulent enterprise.