'Fake Korean' Chinese man jailed for conning 39 women using photos of handsome Korean men
A Chinese man is facing 11 years of imprisonment after conning more than 560,000 yuan (P4,500,700) from 39 women by hiding behind photos of two handsome Korean men and multiple identities.
In a report by the South China Morning Post, 38-year-old He Gansheng bamboozled the women who were mostly in their 20s by posing as men with attractive facial features and high-ranking professions.
The police found that he used the identities of a doctor in Shanghai, a lawyer in Shenzhen, and a PhD student in Beijing. He would then send his online "girlfriends" selfies of two handsome men from South Korea that he downloaded from the internet.
His actions resulted in his victims losing significant amounts of money, ranging from a few thousand to more than 110,000 yuan (P900,000) each. He would reportedly earn their trust before borrowing money from them to repay his expenses.
When the women demanded that he repay his debt, he made various excuses not to pay them back before ultimately blocking them online.
As detailed in an article by a court in central China’s Hubei province, the man never met his victims in person. His criminal acts began in 2016 and went on for four years until it was eventually exposed by his last victim, who called the police after losing all her savings to Gansheng. Prior to this, none of his victims reported to the police.
The article also revealed that Gansheng is a married man, describing him as "ordinary-looking, short at 160cm tall, married with three children and unemployed".
Gansheng was charged with 11 years and six months in jail and was fined with 30,000 yuan (P240,000) in April last year, according to a verdict published on China’s leading judicial decisions database.