The Jinshan District People's Court yesterday sentenced Li Guixia to two years in prison and fined her 20,000 yuan (US$2,410) for defrauding three landlords by offering them a chance to invest in her business.
Her three accomplices, Li Yongshi, Yang Peng and Yang Huairong, all of whom hail from the same town in Anhui Province, were given sentences ranging from one year to 15 months in jail for their part in the scheme.
Prosecutors said the gang, led by Li Guixia, swindled 35,396 yuan from three local residents in Jinshan District between April 8 and 15 this year.
The victims were all landlords who had rented apartments to the gang.
Li told the victims she dealt in Chinese medicines when renting the apartments to use as an office, prosecutors told the court.
After renting an apartment, Li's accomplices would show up pretending to be buyers. Li would make sure the landlord was present when the buyers paid for her products with large sums of cash, the court heard.
The plan was to convince the victims that Li's business was very profitable before she invited them to invest in the company.
One landlord surnamed Shen gave Li 12,896 yuan.
Over the following several days, the gang used the same scheme to rent apartments from two landlords surnamed Zhou and Qi.
Zhou and Qi were swindled out of 15,000 yuan and 7,500 yuan respectively, the court heard.
After the three victims gave the money to Li, she and her accomplices simply vanished.
"As more and more fraud cases taking place on the streets have been disclosed in newspapers and TV programs, people have become more cautious when they met strangers," said Kong Lingjie, a court official.
That is why the gang decided to rent apartments to gain their victims' trust, Kong said.