86-year-old Hu Fanping lost 1.08 million yuan, and the family's life was gone; 68-year-old Wu Qin was fooled by the young salesman and never asked for money back; 63-year-old Cao Yinglin jumped from the bridge, and his body was found three days later... The money for retirement is not easy to make, but it is easy to cheat.
"I am in good health now, but when I get old?"
"You don't know how good they said at that time!"
"I'm not greedy for this money and small gains, but I really want to live in a nursing home, for fear that my condition will worsen in the future and cause trouble for my children."
"These money is given by my children, and our retirement salary is the entire savings of my wife and I."
...
On the China Judgment Document Network, using keywords such as "nuin care home" and " illegal absorption of public deposits " as screening conditions, 101 criminal first-instance judgments can be found in which all victims are middle-aged and elderly groups and hope to accept elderly care services in the future. It involves 96 cases, covering 26 provincial administrative regions, with more than 60,000 victims and more than 8 billion yuan involved.
Ponzi Scam
Through analysis of 83 verdicts that mentioned the number of victims, we found that the average number of victims in pension fraud cases was 771. In a case that occurred in Jiangxi, the number of victims was even as high as 7,883.
Why are there hundreds of thousands of victims? One very important reason is that pension fraud is usually a Ponzi scheme. Scammers need to constantly attract new customers, take a portion of their money and return it to old customers as interest, so that they can maintain the scam. In addition, old customers have tasted the sweetness and out of good intentions, they are likely to attract relatives and friends to join. As a result, the scope of fraud is getting bigger and bigger, and there are more and more victims.
An elderly man who was cheated said in an interview with the media: "I was in a hot spring in a leisure hotel around Chengdu. I met a sister in her 80s. She was older than me. Everyone started chatting and became familiar with each other. She highly recommended to me that there was a nursing home that was very affordable and told me that I must go and have a look."
Because many scammers would give promised benefits at the beginning, they often collapsed until they absconded with the money or were unable to pay the principal and interest, and the victims would realize that they were cheated. Therefore, the time span of elderly care fraud cases is usually very long.
The 96 cases we screened this time have an average time span of 922.29 days, about two and a half years. Among them, the longest-lasting case occurred in Henan. The defendant participated in the fraud of 1,332 fund-raising households for nearly 450 million yuan in the eight years from early 2009 to early 2017.
Not only are there many victims and a long time span, scammers will also commit long-term and multiple frauds on the same victim, so pension fraud cases often involve huge amounts.
The 96 cases we screened this time, all of which involved 83.554 million yuan, and the cumulative amount involved was 8.021 billion yuan, of which the maximum amount involved in a single case was 1.4 billion yuan.
There are many routines and team scammers
The elderly who have to bargain for a few cents of vegetables, why do people cheat all the "coffin book"?
is likely initially because of frugality. Register and get eggs and soybean oil, buy cards and spend money, and travel for free every day... The initial small favor made the elderly let down their guard. Little do they know that this falls into the routine of scammers "snap long-term fishing" of big fish. The high "dividend interest" and the extremely tempting "membership discount". Only when the elderly taste the initial sweetness and slowly increase their investment will they find that they have fallen into the trap.
There is another reason, scammers are now committing crimes in professional teams. Among the 96 cases screened this time, 54 defendants were many, more than half, involving a total of 328 defendants. The judgment with the largest number of people involved included 26 defendants, and these people were just the "leaders" of the front-line "marketing team".
In the interlocking fraud layout, many steps such as distributing leaflets, attracting "customers", leading tours, organizing travel, signing contracts, etc. require multiple people to complete in partnership. According to many victims, they often "climb" marketers in nursing homes while walking in parks, buying vegetables in the market, and gatherings with friends.
sorted out related cases and found that the large number of salesmen in the "marketing team" are recruited from society. It is reported that a retirement apartment that has "exploded" outsourcing the apartment beds to more than 20 "professional marketing" teams to distribute them, with a commission of 18% to 25%.
is these omnipresent "marketing teams" that "send warmth" to empty-nest elderly people every few days, which to some extent makes up for the shortcomings of children and grandchildren not being around. Not long ago, a "debt" case of a nursing home in Changsha was tried. Several elderly people who attended the trial said that they did not blame much for the salesperson who guided them to sign the contract before the debt.
.19 billion elderly people how to place
No matter how many routines or scammers are there, if there is no gap in the demand for pension, such cases will not be so prevalent.
According to the data of the seventh census, the national population aged 65 and above in 2020 was 190 million (an increase of 100 million from 2000), accounting for 13.5% of the total population; the proportion of 149 prefecture-level and above-mentioned population has exceeded 14%, entering the stage of deep aging defined by international standards.
Relying solely on public nursing homes, it cannot meet the growing pension needs. The Ministry of Civil Affairs has issued several documents to encourage the construction of private nursing homes . However, under the influence of practical factors such as the general low profits of private nursing homes and the long investment recovery period, private nursing homes still frequently encounter problems such as difficulty in profit and financing in their operations, resulting in the elderly care industry being deeply trapped in the dilemma of "it's easy to cheat but hard to make money".
The victims of the cases we screened this time are all groups with elderly care needs. They usually want to get or book elderly care beds, have a good elderly care environment, enjoy discounts in the future, and do not cause trouble for their children, etc., and fraudsters use this need psychology to set up traps point-to-point. Allow to buy out and book a bed. If you don’t stay for the time being, you can choose to return interest; lead a visit to false elderly care environments, set up activity rooms, libraries, etc. to attract the elderly; promote good medical facilities and assistance plans, etc. to break through the psychological defense of the elderly.
The situation of "viral" spread of pension fraud has exposed the "blind spot" of supervision to some extent. Many experts said in an interview that after-study, illegal fundraising, fraud and other mass-related crimes are often punished for a long time. At the same time, the creditor-debtor relationship of the fundraising entities is complex, the asset disposal is difficult, and the proportion of recovered funds is low. Obviously, only by strengthening the on-site and post-event supervision of private nursing homes can we prevent problems from happening.
For ordinary people, care more about the elderly around them, and don’t let them only get warmth and company from scammers; spend more energy to help the elderly realize that "high returns" and "high profits" are often traps.
Data News Editor Li Yuan Intern Qi Jiyuan
New Media Design Miao Qihui
Proofreading Wang Xin m11m11m11m11m11m11m11m11m11m11m11m1
