Million "head fee" scam

Comics/Gao Yue

　　□ Our reporter Fan Tianjiao

　　"Packages can be bought, but you can't buy them for a full refund." For buyers who want to "make new", such "head fee" advertisements may not be unfamiliar.

A reporter from the "Rules of Law Daily" recently learned from the Baohe Branch of the Public Security Bureau of Hefei City, Anhui Province that the local police have uncovered a case of fraudulently defrauding "head fees" for a fictitious property listing. A total of 11 people were defrauded of more than 2.2 million yuan.

　　At about 21 o'clock on June 15th, the Second Criminal Police Team of the Responsible District of Baohe Branch received a report from Qian that he was defrauded by a real estate agent of 200,000 yuan of "head fees".

　　The so-called "head fee" means that buyers must pay an additional fee in addition to the contract price in order to be eligible to purchase houses from these properties.

Surprisingly, Qian himself is also engaged in intermediary work, and Fang is still on the same side.

　　"He reposted the listing of a popular real estate in WeChat Moments. I happened to have a client who wanted to buy this house, so I asked him if he could arrange it." Qian said, and Fang promised to pay 200,000 yuan. Yuan’s “head fee”.

After negotiation, the two agreed to pay a deposit of 20,000 yuan in advance.

　　According to Fang's original statement, the house purchase contract can be signed on the evening of June 12.

But before signing the contract that day, Fang proposed to transfer the remaining 180,000 yuan to him, and Qian agreed and did so.

However, in the evening, Fang did not show up, and the excuse given was that someone else was in his hometown for a while, and the house was preempted by someone else for a while.

Qian's client requested a refund, but Qian can't contact him anymore.

　　The police investigation found that as many as 11 victims were deceived by Fang, using the same methods.

Among them are Fang's customers, Fang's colleagues, and many of them are industry peers.

Among them, Fang's old customer, Han, transferred him 450,000 yuan to buy a set of popular listings, which was the highest amount of fraud in a single transaction.

　　"He said that his colleague has high-quality housing in his hand and is able to sign the house. If the signing fails, I believe him. In fact, this house is not his colleague's at all, it is his own fiction." People say.

　　"Every time he promised to get the house dealt with in about 3 days, and after 3 days, he kept asking me to wait for various reasons." Another victim reported that after the "head fee" was paid, Fang Mou said that the house was wagging. , Strictly arrested, the homeowner’s mother was seriously ill and could not sign for the time being. The reason was delayed, and they realized that the situation was not right.

　　Under the strong offensive of the police handling the case, Fang Mou, seeing that the incident was revealed, reluctantly chose to surrender.

　　According to investigation, Fang Mou is 26 years old this year. After graduating from college, he went to other provinces to do odd jobs. He did not work as a housing agency in a real estate company in Hefei until 2020.

According to Fang's account, because when he first started as an intermediary, he did successfully help customers buy their favorite houses, so customers believed that he had this ability and trusted him.

　　In November 2020, Fang discovered the channel of “head fee”. Not only did customers buy “head money” directly from him, but also peers bought it from him. Some of them could be done, even if the deal could not be completed, they would pay the money. Return the same as the number.

　　With the hot real estate market in Hefei, phenomena such as tying parking spaces and ingeniously establishing names and charges have emerged one after another. Hefei has launched a series of control "combination punches". Since April, it has implemented the degree system, second-hand housing purchase restrictions, and hot real estate "lotter + sales restrictions". The initiative requires lottery sales of hot real estates and notarization by a notary institution. Any form of price increase in real estate sales is strictly prohibited.

The "Eight New Deals" severely cracked down on chaos in the real estate market, regulated the order of the real estate market, and urged the market and home buyers to return to rationality.

　　This also makes it difficult for bad intermediaries to take advantage of the loopholes.

As a result, Fang started to fabricate a house, or directly "grafted" the house information forwarded by the circle of friends among his colleagues to himself, claiming that he had channels to buy, but in fact he did not know anyone who could directly buy a house. People don’t know the authenticity of Moments information.

　　Knowing that he was unable to repay, Fang made false promises of helping others to successfully purchase a house by fabricating a good property on hand, and repeatedly defrauding customers and 11 intermediary colleagues for a total of 2.28 million yuan, except for the proceeds. Part of it is used to pay off debts, and most of it is used for online gambling to squander.

　　Fang said that he had just started online gambling three years ago. At that time, his betting was relatively small. Basically, he lost every time and rarely won. After losing, he would continue to gamble and continue to lose if he wanted to get his money back.

In 2019, when he lost his savings, he borrowed money from relatives and friends for gambling. His mother even sold his hometown house to help him pay off the debt.

　　But this still didn't let him get lost.

In December 2020, Fang misappropriated the deposit of the "headline fee" for the first time.

Before the house was sold, he collected an extra 20,000 yuan from the client for gambling. As a result, the house was not signed on time, resulting in the 20,000 yuan owed to the client.

　　"At that time, I owed foreign debts because of gambling, and I had no money. I had to collect more deposits from other customers in the same way, part of it was used to repay the money of previous customers, and part of it was used for gambling, so the hole became bigger and bigger. Fang explained that by March of this year, in order to pay off foreign debts, he was even more frantically defrauding the "head money", imagining that he would try again through online gambling.

　　Fang is deeply trapped in gambling and cannot extricate himself from it.

When a creditor asked him for money, he procrastinated for various reasons, and when he was in a hurry, he would tear down the east wall to make up for the west wall.

After the family members found the abnormality, they were forced to ask the reason, and Fang told the whole story, and then surrendered under the persuasion of his family members.

Currently, Fang has been criminally detained by Baohe police in accordance with the law.

　　The policeman handling the case reminded that buyers must go through formal channels to buy new houses, and do not believe in the "headline fee" statement, and have a fluke mentality, otherwise it is easy to be deceived.

If you find advertisements such as "head fees" on platforms such as Moments, you should report it to the real estate supervision department in a timely manner, and the relevant departments will conduct a strict investigation.