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Realty firm’s boss faces US$33m fraud allegations
MORE than 1,200 buyers from four provincial areas have filed police reports that they have been cheated of over 200 million yuan (US$33 million) by real estate agencies owned by a single individual, Xinhua news agency said.
Wu Binglin and another nine suspects were caught in Beijing by police from Baotou City of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on Monday morning for suspected contract frauds, according to Xinhua. It did not name the nine suspects.
Their capture came after hundreds of Wu’s real estate agency’s outlets in over 50 cities have been closed suddenly since the end of August while property buyers from at least nine provinces alleged they were defrauded of their money, said Xinhua.
On September 3, 120 outlets of Ningxia Xinglin Real Estate Marketing Co in Yinchuan, capital of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, shut suddenly. Staff from Xinglin branches in other cities of Ningxia and those of Debang Real Estate Broker Co — all with Wu as their legal representative — disappeared.
Police reports
Meanwhile, police in Liaoning, Jilin, Shaanxi, Henan, Hebei, Yunnan and Gansu provinces well as Inner Mongolia have received reports from buyers that Wu’s companies had illegally collected payments from them, but did not refund them in time after the transactions failed. Some also complained the companies had not gone through the purchasing process.
Yang Xueping, a buyer in Yinchuan, said she saved 136,000 yuan as first payment in Xinglin’s bank account in June to buy a house and waited to go through all procedures within 45 days. But the company repeatedly claimed there were delays in the procedures. When she asked the company to return her money on September 3, she found she could not contact anyone in the firm.
A primary investigation has found over 1,200 buyers from Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi and Gansu had alleged they were defrauded of more than 200 million yuan.
Xinglin Real Estate Co was set up in 2009 and started property brokerage business the next year, said Xinhua, adding that it had over 140 branches in more than 50 cities nationwide, all managed by Wu.
After Xinglin expanded its business across the country, Wu used names such as Debang, Hengqing and Zhengfeng for his outlets in some cities.
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