"Beauty Loan"

——The fruit of black evil behind the bustling night

  Zhang Yinfeng Hu Chaohua Lu Lingyan

  The "night economy" in Changsha, Hunan is booming.

The Wuyi Road Commercial District, Pozi Street Food Street, and "Jiefang West" Bar Street have become "net celebrity check-in places" for tourists from all over the country.

However, behind this bustling and lively scene, a criminal gang targeted young women working in night scenes such as KTVs and bars, using the "Beauty Loan" of "low interest, no mortgage, and fast lending" as a guise to induce borrowing.

And at the moment they signed the "Loan Agreement", a carefully woven criminal network opened up...

Ignorant girl is trapped in the black hole of "Beauty Loan"

  20-year-old Xiao Nan (pseudonym) works as a waiter in a KTV in Changsha.

Although his income is not low, he is accustomed to high consumption in entertainment venues. Xiaonan has a lot of living expenses and cannot make ends meet every month.

One day, Xiaonan accidentally saw a loan advertisement in WeChat Moments: "No mortgage, low interest, fast loan." She was worried about the rent. After several contacts, the "intermediary" took her to a person named Wen Chen’s boss.

  Seeing that Xiaonan was young and beautiful and working in KTV, Wen Chen spoke very politely: "The loan is 10,000, the interest is 200 per day, the overdue penalty is 1,000 per day, and the loan period is 1 month." Xiaonan thought, this interest rate is based on his own. The ability should be no problem, so I signed the blank loan agreement without thinking.

Unexpectedly, Wen Chen went on to say that he would get back a "service fee" of 3,000 yuan for borrowing 10,000.

Seeing Xiao Nan hesitated a little, Wen Chen immediately said that this was the rule of their business, and everyone did it this way, Xiao Nan had to agree to Wen Chen's request.

  Unexpectedly, this was not over yet, Wen Chen told Xiao Nan again that because she did not have a fixed address in Changsha, she had to take a nude photo as a guarantee.

Xiao Nan immediately rejected Wen Chen's request, but Wen Chen said that the photo was only a guarantee, and as long as she paid the money on time, the photo would never go out.

The "intermediary" on the side kept persuading her not to have any worries, and just like that, Xiao Nan, who was in urgent need of money, agreed doubtfully.

  One month later, Xiao Nan was unable to repay the loan.

At this time, Wen Chen's fierce situation was revealed: "Either pay the money, or I will send the photos to your parents and let them return." Xiao Nan begged, Wen Chen told Xiao Nan meaningfully: "It's okay not to post photos, but you have to Be honest and obedient."

  A few days later, Wen Chen and Xiao Nan met with a "President Li".

"You signed the contract with Mr. Li, and our accounts will be cleared. You will listen to Mr. Li in the future." Xiao Nan, who is ignorant, has not realized that Wen Chen has already paid her a price of 40,000 yuan. "Set" was given to "Mr. Li".

  "I don't know why 7,000 yuan became 40,000. They said that if I were not obedient, they would send out my photos. I had no choice but to listen to them. I couldn't get away." After the incident, Xiao Nan was in the public security organ. Crying.

  Xiao Nan's experience is a microcosm of the experiences of many victims of "Beauty Loan".

"Girls at night show use money quickly and come in quickly. They are afraid that their family members will know that they are in this industry, and feel shameless, so they are better controlled." said Liu Pingan, a member of the Wenchen criminal gang.

  It is precisely because of the characteristics of women working at night scenes and KTVs, such as insufficient social experience, earning ability, and easy control. Since March 2017, Wen Chenjiao, Wen Wu, Liu Pingan and others have targeted night scenes and KTV working women in various areas of Changsha City. The so-called "Beauty Loan" was launched on a large scale.

Under the guise of "low interest, no mortgage, fast loan" and other guise, the victim was lured to borrow money, and a series of "routines" such as taking nude photos, inflating the loan amount, signing yin and yang contracts, and charging high interest, defrauded the victim's property.

As of the incident, the criminal gang had “loaned” more than 700 female victims more than 1,100 times, with a loan amount of more than 10 million yuan and illegal profits of more than 3 million yuan.

Victims become criminals

  "I will take you to see'Mr Jiang' tonight..." Speaking of that unbearable experience, the victim Xiao Fei (pseudonym) still couldn't help shaking.

  In the first half of 2017, Xiao Fei borrowed 38,000 yuan from Wen Chen, but the contract amount of the loan was as high as 85,000 yuan.

Unbearable to endure Wen Chen and others' continuous collection and harassment, Xiao Fei began to avoid Wen Chen.

Unexpectedly, Wen Chen, who had "magical powers", would "catch" her at her place a few days later.

  That night, Wen Chen, Wen Wu and others took Xiao Fei to the Xiangjiang River. Wen Chen pointed to Xiang Jiang and said to her, "This is'Mr Jiang'."

  Then Xiao Fei was forced to take off his clothes and walk towards Jiang Xin. Xiao Fei was so frightened that she knelt down and begged for mercy.

Wen Chen and others were unmoved, and while continuing to drive Xiao Fei away, they also used their mobile phones to record videos.

Desperate Xiao Fei could only walk into the river until the river flooded her body, Xiao Fei cried hoarse for help, Wen Chen and others asked her to return to the shore.

  After this incident, Xiao Fei no longer dared to resist Wen Chen, and could only be at his mercy.

From the next day, Wen Chen and others began to force Xiao Fei to go to KTV in Changsha, Zhuzhou and other places to sit on KTV, prostitution and repay the so-called "debt."

  In April 2018, Wen Chen learned that it is profitable for women to donate eggs, so he started with the idea of ​​forcing Xiao Fei, who was not yet married, to donate eggs.

Soon after, Wen Chen arranged for his subordinates to take Xiao Fei to an institution in Wuhan. After several days of medication, injections, and physical examination, Xiao Fei walked onto the operating table with fear.

  "I remember the pain and humiliation of egg donation all my life. After the money I borrowed, I felt that I would never be able to pay it back. I could only listen to them." When asked, Zhong Xiaofei still couldn't help it.

  "For victims who do not repay on time, Wen Chen and others mainly adopt two methods to collect collections. One is to force the victims and their families to make repayments through violent or soft violence methods such as threats and intimidation, visits to their hometowns, etc.; A single flat account, the so-called'unwinding', transfers the victim to other'Jialidai' gangs. After the'unwinding', the victim's debt will often be greatly increased." The undertaking prosecutor introduced.

  In April 2018, Wen Chen, who ended compulsory detoxification, quickly returned to his old profession and re-convened members of the gang including Liu Pingan, Wenwu, and Liu Pengwei.

On the one hand, continue to increase investment, and at the same time set up two lending branches, "Yinghe Fortune" and "Chengxin Entrepreneurship"; on the other hand, continue to win over gang members, adjust the division of labor and structure of personnel, and divide the gang into marketing group, document review group, and collection group Three groups of people have formulated a clear organizational discipline and salary system. The scale of gang lending has continued to expand, and the industry's influence has increased. By the time of the case, there were 26 members of the Wenchen gang.

The crime chain behind the interest chain

  From the second half of 2017, Wen Chen and others began to force the victims to sit on tables in some KTVs and saunas, prostitution, and provide “peripheral” services through WeChat publicity.

Over time, Wen Chen gradually became dissatisfied with this kind of "profit" mode of making small troubles and not becoming a climate.

  In the second half of 2018, Wen Chen, who spent the whole year in the night show, met Ye Jing, the manager of the "Yulan Team".

The "Yulan Team" is an organization that specializes in training and providing staff for large KTVs and bars, and has a fixed cooperative relationship with many night shows.

With the resources of Ye Jing and others, Wen Chen established a stable criminal chain of "lending-prostitution".

  On the one hand, Wen Chen forced the victims to stay in concentrated accommodation, arranged special personnel to supervise them, and formulated a strict system of attendance at get off work.

For the disobedient victims, they are punished by threats, fines, corporal punishment and other methods to ensure that the victims "absolutely obey."

On the other hand, the key members of the gang are arranged to be grouped by film, and each group leads a certain number of victims into some KTVs to carry out sit-on and prostitution activities.

During the peak period, Wen Chen centralized control of 20 victims.

  In January 2019, Wen Chen got acquainted with Xiao Yongle, the leader of another large-scale "Beauty Loan" criminal gang in Changsha, and cooperated with him to engage in transnational prostitution crimes.

Electronic data becomes a breakthrough point in the case

  In March 2019, the Changsha public security organs centralized collection of Wenchen and other "Beauty Loans" groups, and more than 20 members of the Wenchen group were all arrested and brought to justice.

Under the unified leadership of the Changsha City Procuratorate, the Furong District Procuratorate sent three prosecutors to form a special case team to intervene in advance to guide the investigation by the public security agency.

  "'Jialidai' is a variant of'routine loans'. Compared with ordinary'routine loans,''Jialidai' has stronger criminal concealment, and has more victims but high liquidity. It is difficult to contact and collect evidence. At the same time, these The gang usually does not have a complete loan financial account book, and the suspect’s attitude towards pleading guilty is very poor, making it extremely difficult to handle the case.” The prosecutor in charge said, “It is difficult to ascertain the facts based on conventional evidence collection methods, and we must find another way.”

  During the early intervention process, the task force discovered that many people involved in the case had talked about WeChat contacts, photos and other issues. The task force was keenly aware that electronic data might become an important breakthrough in this case.

  But the problem came again.

  Searching for evidence in the huge electronic data is undoubtedly a needle in a haystack. In order to sort out useful information as comprehensively and quickly as possible, the task force first instructs the public security organs to classify the "importance level" of electronic data according to the status and division of labor of each member, and then use " Major crimes such as "routine loans", prostitution, and gang-related crimes are used as standards to initially classify and locate the content of electronic data.

  The effort paid off. After more than 60 days of careful analysis, the task force screened out more than 30 victims who could be identified.

"The public security organs quickly contacted these victims to make transcripts, and based on this, they retrieved relevant WeChat and Alipay transfer records."

  These evidence materials not only enrich the evidence system of the Wen Chen gang's illegal borrowing crime and organization, and forced prostitution crimes, but also bring out the facts of Wen Chen and others' rape and forced indecent crimes.

  During the review and prosecution stage, the task force found that some victims mentioned that they had been forced to have sexual relations with Wen Chen and others, but Wen Chen and others all denied this, claiming that the two parties had a "voluntary" relationship.

Due to the lack of direct evidence, the public security organs did not identify the criminal facts of rape or forced indecency when they transferred for review and prosecution.

  "Most of the victims in this case have been illegally'controlled' by Wen Chen and others for a long time. Due to professional sensitivity, we believe that Wen Chen and Liu Pengwei are very likely to be involved in crimes such as rape." The prosecutor in charge said.

  In order to ascertain the facts, the task force compiled a detailed outline of evidence collection, conducted investigations and evidence collection on its own, and guided the investigation by the public security organs.

While continuing to talk to the person involved in the case, to verify whether the victim was forced into prostitution, whether there was a so-called "debt exemption", etc., while continuing to dig out useful information from electronic data.

Through targeted reinforcement of the evidence materials, the procuratorial agency finally added 6 rapes and 2 compulsory indecency crimes by Wen Chen and others.

  During the investigation stage, Liu Pingan, an important member of the Wenchen gang, has always denied participating in gang organization and forced prostitution.

  "During the trial, the defendant Liu Pingan still refused to plead guilty and tried to escape the guilt. What he didn't expect was that we were already prepared." The prosecutor in charge said, "We were thinking of changing our mindset at the time. Zhang Min, who worked with Ping An, started."

  Taking Zhang Min as a breakthrough point, the task force determined that the WeChat contact "A Chengmei Medical" who had repeatedly talked with Zhang Min about sending girls abroad for prostitution was Liu Pingan.

  On May 18 this year, the Changsha City Procuratorate charged the crimes of organizing, leading, and participating in underworld organizations, crimes of fraud, extortion, organization and forced prostitution, illegal detention, robbery, rape, assisting in organizing prostitution, and compulsory Wen Chen and other 27 people were prosecuted for indecent assault.

On September 14, the Changsha City Intermediate Court issued a verdict of first instance and sentenced the gang’s first offender to life imprisonment, deprivation of political rights for life, and confiscated all property. The remaining defendants were sentenced to guilt.

After the judgment of the first instance, Wen Chen and others filed an appeal, and the case is currently being tried in the second instance.