Beijing aristocracy conned by single mother
Woman passed herself off as a wealthy tycoon and daughter of top Communist Party officials
The ( athletes) thought I was a tycoon because I dressed well, carried a real Louis Vuitton handbag and lived in an expensive compound
WANG TI
CON ARTIST
BEIJING — In real life, her father was a handyman, her mother a bank clerk.
But 32- year- old Wang Ti convinced Beijing’s aristocracy that she was one of them — a woman of class and refinement, with impeccable connections to the top of the Communist Party.
Over three years she conned two dozen victims out of nearly $ 10.5 million in order to fund an irrepressible taste for the finer things in life.
Last week, however, it was revealed she had been jailed for life. Written testimonies from her trial, obtained by the London Daily Telegraph, lay bare the gilded life of modern Beijing, filled with intoxicating greed for luxury apartments, fast cars and designer clothes.
“She drove a Bentley convertible and always had the latest mobile phone and a fancy watch,” said one of her victims, who asked not to be named because his family is still unaware of the huge sums he lost to Wang.
“She was not stunning, and her clothes were not spectacular, but you could tell they were very expensive. When we met she was always on the phone, talking about business or huge land deals. I thought she must have some very high- level position, far away from my normal life,” he added.
Wang came to Beijing in 2008 from Dalian, where she had been a soccer player’s wife. After leaving her husband, Wang Sheng, she decided to reinvent herself in China’s capital.
She passed herself off as the daughter of Li Changchun, then a member of the Politburo Standing Committee. She claimed to be the child of a secret affair between Li and Lu Xin, a former deputy minister. “That made it impossible to check her background, a very delicate matter,” said the victim.
She rapidly acquired a celebrity boyfriend, Xiao Qin, 27, an Olympic gold medal- winning gymnast and a senior People’s Liberation Army officer.
“I first met him at a wedding,” she said in her written testimony to the court. “Afterwards I drove an Audi TT and carried a fancy handbag and spent a lot of money making sure I looked good.”
Their affair quickly progressed. Xiao introduced her to his circle, including Olympic athletes Yang Yun and Yang Wei, who Wang later conned.
“The ( athletes) thought I was a tycoon because I dressed well, carried a real Louis Vuitton handbag and lived in an expensive compound,” she said.
But after Wang’s husband cut her off financially, she was forced to find other ways to maintain her lifestyle. She began renting out apartments, claiming ownership, and selling them.
“In October 2010, one of my colleagues who had bought an apartment from her introduced me,” said the victim. “She offered me a ($ 1.6- million) apartment for ($ 1 million). She asked me to transfer ($ 52,300) immediately as a sign of good faith, which I thought was a bit strange.
“Then I met her and she asked me to pay a ($ 348,600) deposit and we signed an agreement. After that she kept calling to ask for money for various things, like taxes. I ended up paying all upfront because she told me she was low on cash and then she posted pictures of her baby son on the Internet with tubes coming out of his head, so I assumed she needed the money for medical bills.”
But as the months passed and no contract materialized, her victim became suspicious and reported her to police.