In today’s world, it’s not uncommon to find people who work jobs they do not like for the mere sake of getting a salary.
A woman in China, however, found a neat (but illegal) trick around this — by working 16 different jobs without actually doing any work.
Instead, she apparently pretended to have client meetings and appeared busy.
With little effort, salaries from her fake work in the 16 jobs allowed her and her husband to afford an expensive villa.
Police eventually discovered the ruse and arrested the lady and many other wage fraudsters.
According to China.com, Guan Yue (pseudonym) and her husband Chen Qiang (pseudonym) took part in a large wage-cheating ring consisting of at least 53 criminals.
The Chinese woman always accepted new job opportunities regardless of her employment status. She took photos during job interviews and sent them to company group chats, passing them off as her meeting with clients.
Even though Guan was raking in salaries from the 16 companies she was ‘working’ for, she was actually doing no work at all.
To avoid mistakes, Guan kept detailed records on A4 papers for each position, reported Oriental Daily. These included start dates, job titles, and records of the bank account linked to each company.
If overwhelmed with job offers, she reportedly “sold” them to others and took a commission.
For three years, Guan kept up the ruse and, with all the salary payments, bought an expensive villa in Shanghai.
Source: Weibo
In Oct 2022, a tech company requested sales applicants with rich marketing experience.
Soon, they hired eight people with impressive résumés. Seven were paid between 8000 yuan (S$1,512) and 9000 yuan (S$1,700). Yang Hong, the core team leader was given a base salary of 20,000 yuan (S$3,800) plus commissions.
Yet three months later in Jan 2023, the ‘experienced’ team produced no results. Mr Liu, the company’s owner, fired them. The team then demanded their full salaries, which the company had to settle.
Soon after, Yang Hong mistakenly uploaded a photo of his resignation letter from another company to the group chat, which he had not left yet.
Mr Liu became suspicious when he noticed that the duration of Yang Hong’s work at the other company overlapped with his work at Mr Liu’s.
He quickly contacted the other company and soon discovered that the eight applicants had been employed in both companies at the same time.
Realising he had fallen victim to a wage-cheating scam, Mr Liu contacted the police.
This was not the first time that employers had noticed Guan’s wage-cheating ring’s misdeeds. However, they usually lacked evidence and police thus only recommended workplace arbitration.
Yet the wage cheaters were experts in arbitration, helping each other over and over. Guan’s husband Chen Qiang even won all 13 arbitration cases he fought.
But this time, police found Mr Liu’s evidence conclusive enough to investigate deeper.
Yang Hong proved to be the loose tread that unravelled the sweater that was the wage-cheating ring. The police found Yang Hong’s numerous bank accounts received funds from over 100 companies over three years.
The investigation dived deeper, collecting hundreds of sets of employee records from many employers. On 8 Mar 2023, the police closed the net and arrested 53 suspects, including Guan and Chen. According to South China Morning Post (SCMP), police apprehended Guan while she was in yet another job interview.
Their crimes involved a total of more than 50 million yuan (S$9,449,095).
Despite one group being shut down, the police estimated that there were at least 700 people in similar salary fraud ‘gangs’ across China.
In one case, a wage-cheating group anonymously tipped off a tech company about a separate group of wage fraudsters in their ranks. After the company fired them, the initial group then replaced those positions with their own wage cheaters.
Even so, the police continued their crackdown, arresting another 108 salary fraudsters in July.
In a similar but much less illegal situation, Singapore’s workers ranked 3rd globally for appearing busy without being productive.
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Featured image adapted from Weibo and Eric Prouzet on Unsplash. Right image is for illustration purposes only.
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