Sales clerk arrested over house fraud case
29/7/2008 13:54
Angela Xu/ Shanghai Daily news
An apartment sales
clerk has been arrested for allegedly defrauding 2.4 million yuan (US$351,391)
from a customer to pay his gambling debts.
Putuo District prosecutors charged
the suspect surnamed Zhang with fraud.
Zhang, 26, from Shanghai, was hired as
a sales clerk by a local high-grade apartment project in 2007. Gambling on
soccer matches soon had him in more than 400,000 yuan of debt.
A woman
surnamed Qian wanted to buy an apartment in March and Zhang had the idea that he
could use Qian's deposit to pay his debt.
He offered Qian discounts on the
price of the property and she paid him 20,000 yuan to secure the deal,
prosecutors said.
A few days later, Qian paid 40 percent of the total price
of the apartment but the money, 980,000 yuan, went into a private account
belonging to Zhang's former girlfriend.
Zhang offered Qian an acknowledgement
document from the company. After Qian filled in the document, Zhang allegedly
falsified the company's financial stamp.
On April 10, Zhang asked Qian to
make the rest of the payment. The total was more than 2.4 million yuan.
Zhang
paid his gambling debts and used the rest of the money to buy stocks.
When
Zhang came up with various excuses why Qian couldn't complete the property
purchase, she checked the account number of the company's legal representative
and found it wasn't the same as the one she had sent money to. She went to the
sales center and was told the stamp on the acknowledgement document was
false.
Zhang tried to escape but he was soon caught by
police.
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