Busting fraud and sexual abuse

The authorities are taking action after the deaths of young graduates tricked by Ponzi scams, and recent reports about molested children and women.

EIGHT million – this is the estimated population of Selangor and Kuala Lumpur. It is also the number of fresh faces with high academic qualifications in China’s labour market this year.

The competition is strong and getting an ideal job may not be easy. This has resulted in some graduates falling into the temptation of making big money – a fantasy promoted to them by pyramid scheme operators.

In recent years, fresh graduates have been the target of these groups, who believe that innocent young minds are easily manipulated and that those with a higher education background would appear more convincing to lure potential customers.

A series of tragedies that claimed the lives of young school-leavers recently has prompted the Chinese Government to clamp down on Ponzi activities.

One of the victims was Li Wenxing, a 23-year-old graduate in resource exploration engineering from Northeast University.

Hailing from a farming family in a rural town of Shandong province, the young and ambitious Li was unable to find a job after leaving school in June last year.

He then decided to take up a fourmonth Java programming course. Li paid the fee of over 16,000 yuan (RM10,400) with money his family borrowed from relatives and friends.

Upon completing the programme in January, he found a web development engineer job with a promised salary of 6,000 yuan (RM3,900) but he only received slightly more than 2,000 yuan (RM1,300) after “some deductions here and there”, as he told his younger sister Li Wenyue. Li quit two months later.

In May, he moved to Tianjin after securing a job via a popular online job recruitment site and two months later, Li was found drowned in a small pond.

Police believe Li’s death was related to a Ponzi scam, and have arrested five people from the “company” which hired him.

Operators of pyramid schemes in China are known for controlling and torturing their targets, taking away their identification documents, cash and cell phones while confining and forcing these young, innocent people to work for them.

Another graduate, Zhang Chao, 25, was abandoned and left to die by the roadside at a secluded area in Tianjin by members of pyramid schemes.

Zhang, who held a civil engineering degree from Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology, initially had a heat stroke three days after joining the Ponzi scam.

His condition worsened and he was abandoned by the gang members.

The victims also included Year Two student of Changsha Nanfang Professional College Lin Huarong, who joined a pyramid selling group while seeking a part-time job during the summer holiday.

Lin, 20, jumped into the river to escape from members of the scheme she joined in Hubei province. She drowned.

And a 23-year-old man, identified only as Xiang, was tortured to death in Hebei province on July 12. He had several broken ribs.

On Aug 15, police started a threemonth operation against pyramid schemes, especially groups disguised as recruitment agencies to lure school-leavers.

So far, thousands of suspects have been arrested nationwide to assist investigations.

Meanwhile, the little girl mentioned in last week’s column, who was captured in photographs being molested by her foster brother at a railway station, has been claimed by her adopted father – the man who did not stop his son.

This unexpected turn of events has sparked another round of outrage and condemnation from netizens.

The 10-year-old girl, who was rescued and moved to a “safe place” after the suspected paedophile, 18, was arrested, was reported to have been taken home by the foster father – an ex-senior officer with a district finance bureau.

A neighbour said although she was adopted, the couple treated the girl like their own.

“They personally send her to and pick her up from school. I bumped into the father at 11-something one night; he told me he was buying supper for his daughter because she was hungry,” the neighbour told the Legal Evening News.

She believed that the family had no bad intentions, and added that the girl would run around the house in the nude after her shower.

This is the most worrying part – the lack of sex education and awareness among people, so that they cannot differentiate between sexual attacks and showing one’s love for a close family member.

The public has also called for harsher punishment for those convicted of sexual harassment, in a China Youth Daily survey.

Over 53% of women said that they or someone they knew had been sexually harassed on the subway, reported Xinhua.

Beijing police recently launched a crackdown on sexual harassment on the subway and arrested more than 20 suspects over two weeks.

Those guilty of acting indecently or threatening women with violence or coercion can be sentenced to imprisonment of up to five years.