Five years after the "Housing for Pension" scam was exposed——
Their house has not been "set"
After the deception was uncovered, there was a long struggle.
In a "house-for-age" scam, Li Guifang's house was secretly transferred.
After the liar was caught, it took her 8 years to fight 5 lawsuits to get her house back.
Because the swindler set up a "set" to mortgage the property, 74-year-old Li Guifang had to bear the bank loan of 1.89 million yuan by himself.
And in this scam and the long struggle that followed, another elderly man in Beijing, Wu Tao, who was over seventy years old, eventually lost control of the property with a market value of more than 5 million yuan.
The victim Dong Wang and his wife did not return to their house in Huangzhuang, Haidian, Beijing until their death.
It is famous for its high-priced school district housing. Most of the houses cost more than 100,000 yuan per square meter. The 72.9-square-meter house was signed online at a total price of 1,000 yuan, which attracted widespread attention five years ago.
"Under the guise of national policies, lawbreakers create a 'pension panic' and take advantage of the poor financial prevention awareness of some elderly people to maliciously set up a scheme." In August this year, the relevant person in charge of the Beijing Higher People's Court was in a crackdown on pension fraud. Special action press conference.
According to the court's verdict, a total of 51 elderly people were deceived before and after Wu Tao was involved in the "housing for the elderly" scam.
Recently, the reporter contacted 17 victims or their families and found that since the scam was disclosed by the media in 2017, most families are still stuck in the quagmire of subsequent property recovery: 3 houses are in the state of seizure, auction and enforcement, 5 One of them claimed that their house was "forcibly occupied" by a small loan company, and three of them received a receipt of acceptance after reporting the case.
More than one elderly person has experienced "forced house clearance."
An elderly man in his 70s didn't dare to leave the house again after seeing the debt collector smashing it. It was not until he took part in the nucleic acid test in 2020 that he walked out of the house for the first time in more than two years.
Another old man with cancer, whose only property was transferred to someone else's name, could only rent a house that does not belong to him, and pay 6,300 yuan monthly rent to the new owner of the house.
1
Dong Wang's house is a public house he bought in the 1990s.
He lived there for nearly 30 years before falling into the scam.
The house is currently under mortgage. In 2015, Dong Wang and his wife mortgaged the property to obtain 2 million yuan, and then invested in the financial management project introduced by the fund lender.
In the "house-for-age" scam, that was their first step into the quagmire.
Now it seems that the scam is not complicated. In the official notification, it is only half a paragraph of text to summarize: criminals induce the elderly to mortgage their real estate to obtain funds, which are used to buy their corporate wealth management products, causing the elderly to "money" Lost two rooms."
The old man mortgaged the house through different channels and gave it to a man named Guang Yanbin to "invest".
He is part of a deception.
In 2018, the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court sentenced Guang Yanbin to life imprisonment for the crime of fundraising fraud.
On August 4 this year, three new victims were added to the case, and Guang Yanbin was sentenced to 11 years in prison again.
So far, the total amount involved in the case has exceeded 80 million yuan, of which one case involved an amount of more than 12.37 million yuan.
Although Guang Yanbin was sentenced, the property of the elderly is difficult to recover.
During the litigation, the lawyers of several victims strived to solve the problem of "negotiating the house" at one time in this case, seeking to identify the complicity between Guang Yanbin and the small loan company in the scam, so as to investigate the legal responsibility of the members of the small loan company. , Confirm that the relevant contracts signed by the elderly in the scam are invalid.
"Guang Yanbin defrauded the old man of money, but the house was taken away by a small loan company." A lawyer involved in handling the case told reporters that it is safe to say that Guang Yanbin's criminal offense was only part of a scam Part of it does not cover the full scam.
According to judicial practice, the relevant judicial departments have summarized and released the operation routines of such "preventing old age" scams: criminals trick the elderly into signing real estate mortgage guarantees with words such as "room books are useless at home" and "no delay in self-occupation or rental". In the loan contract or related agreement, the funds obtained from the mortgage of the house are used to purchase the so-called wealth management products it recommends, and then the elderly people’s houses are illegally occupied by means of litigation, arbitration, notarization and other means.
The above-mentioned lawyer explained that when the old man said he had no money, Guang Yanbin asked someone to provide them with funds through a small loan company. When the old man did not pay the money, the small loan company obtained the mortgage of the property and sold it. This is a few of the complete "routine loans". a key subject.
On April 9, 2019, the "Opinions on Several Issues Concerning Handling of Criminal Cases of "Routine Loans" (hereinafter referred to as "Opinions") came into effect. Routine loan" is clarified.
But in 2018, "routine loans" were not as well known as they were later.
The lawyers representing the elderly victims can only refer to individual cases in Shanghai and other places.
During the trial of the "Guang Yanbin case", in addition to Guang Yanbin himself, the party who provided funds to the elderly, the members of the small loan company who borrowed and mortgaged, mostly appeared as witnesses.
At that time, Wu Jie, a lawyer of Beijing Zhicheng Law Firm, was entrusted by the government department to lead a team of public interest lawyers to provide legal assistance to dozens of elderly people in the case.
She said that "the final result is particularly regrettable" and did not qualify as a "routine loan" because no direct evidence was found to prove that Guang Yanbin and notaries, small loan companies, and lawyers who provided services formed a subjective complicity. They're a bunch of people."
This is the dilemma that many lawyers representing similar cases have mentioned: one is the elderly victim who has been dragged into exhaustion by routines and is broken up, and the other is the "complete" agreement document, insight into the legal provisions, and even hiring the law all year round The consultant's routine implementation group.
"The other party avoided the risk of illegality from the beginning, or used the contractual binding force of the law." A lawyer said.
The victims of the "Guang Yanbin case" have been fragmented into dozens of reporters, informants, plaintiffs, defendants or persons subject to execution.
Wu Tao and his wife are one of the "fragments".
In 2015, the two old people were led by several members of the small loan company to sign a series of documents at the notary office, real estate center, and bank, mortgaged the property with a market value of more than 5 million yuan, and transferred the received 1.9 million yuan to Guangxi. Yanbin et al.
In 2017, because their son Wu Di accidentally discovered the transfer slip, their house was not secretly transferred, but the "borrower introduced by Guang Yanbin" applied for enforcement.
Due to Guang Yanbin's trial, the enforcement procedure was temporarily suspended.
One day in June this year, Wu Tao once again saw the announcement of forced vacancy posted in front of the unit building and at the door of his house. He felt a "heat wave" from the top of his head to his heels, and he held the wall before he fell.
He realized that the notarial and debt-collection nightmares that had plagued them for years had restarted.
2
In Wu Tao's nightmare, the biggest threat to their house was a notarial certificate signed at the Beijing National Notary Office in 2015.
In the notarial certificate, Wu Tao and his wife and Ji Hui, the borrower brought by the small loan company, all "agreed" to give the repayment agreement a "debt instrument with the effect of enforcement".
If the two are unable to repay the loan within the time limit, the notarial certificate states that "the applicant (creditor) Ji Hui may apply to the competent people's court for compulsory execution with this notary certificate and the "Execution Certificate" issued by this notary office."
In short, if Wu Tao and his wife did not repay the money when they were due, Ji Hui could forcibly repossess the house through legal channels.
Many elderly people said that they did not get the original documents in at least two copies after signing.
Until the children go to the relevant institutions to ask for it, many elderly people know what the "various forms" signed at the beginning are called.
Many elderly people don't even know that the place to go is the notary office.
An elderly victim was over 80 years old, and the child had been working abroad for a long time. In order to prove his civil capacity, the members of the small loan company pushed the elderly to the hospital with a wheelchair to issue an identification certificate.
When Li Guifang was taking notes, the police found that she was illiterate and could only write her own name.
She once "filled out" a series of agreements and notarial certificates under the command of the staff of the small loan company.
A number of elderly victims, including Wu Tao and his wife, said that they signed "in confusion" according to the "instructions" of the members of the small loan company.
What initially attracted them were free towels and eggs.
After Wu Tao and his wife retired, they went to "hang out" with other elderly people at the health care lecture hall and health care product presentation site. After listening to the class, the elderly people left contact information for each other - they made an appointment to exchange information, and participated in similar activities wherever they were held.
In 2015, Tian Cheng, who was also active in the Health Lecture Hall, invited Wu Tao to participate in a "house-for-age care" project of "investing in Yiwu Small Commodity Market", claiming that this project would "develop and strengthen my country's e-commerce economy" and "don't be afraid if you don't have money, just have a house." ", after participating, you can sit at home and "sit back and enjoy the income" on a monthly basis, and the interest on the loan is also paid by the "professional investment boss".
Tian Cheng solemnly warned them not to let their children know about this, otherwise it would interfere with the project process and the principal would not be returned.
This is a crucial step in pension fraud.
Traders often choose the elderly who have no children or children who are not around, and also use coercive and enticing words and unspoken rules to ask the elderly not to spread the "project" to others.
On October 9, 2015, in the business hall of a sub-branch in Haidian District of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Ji Hui, the borrower, transferred the mortgage of 1.9 million yuan to the name of Wu Tao's wife Zhang Xiahui.
The money sat in her bank card for a while and then went to different places.
In front of the counter in the same business hall, a member of a small loan company "forcibly" asked Wu Tao and his wife for 76,000 yuan in cash as "the first month's interest".
Wu Tao didn't understand at the time, "Why do you have to pay back interest when you just borrow money?" Later, he learned that this is called "decapitation interest". He calculated that based on the monthly interest of 76,000 yuan, the annual loan interest rate was as high as 48%.
The other two people at the scene acted as introducers, asking them to change to another business hall to withdraw cash and give them as "introduction fees".
According to the account provided by the introducer, Zhang Xiahui transferred the remaining 1.77 million yuan to Guang Yanbin.
After only two months, Wu Tao began to receive calls from small loan companies urging loan interest.
He found that Tian Cheng's "Guang Yanbin repaying the interest" did not materialize.
After Guang Yanbin was arrested, the loan agreement and notarial certificate were not cancelled or revoked.
In order to get out of the scam as soon as possible, they tried to repay the interest to the borrower Ji Hui, but the other party refused.
The loan agreement and repayment agreement did not specify the bank account, transfer address and other valid information necessary for repayment.
Until June this year, when receiving the enforcement ruling sent by the court, Wu Tao's family contacted the court, hoping to help meet the borrower.
Lian Dayou, Wu Tao's attorney, the "Volunteer Envoy for Elderly Rights Protection" of the Legal Service Volunteer Committee of the China Volunteers Association, and the director of Beijing Jingben Law Firm, believes that the other party's goal is to illegally occupy the property from the beginning, and the whole process conforms to the "routine loan". constituent elements.
The notarial certificate that has taken effect has always been a "set" that is difficult to unravel in many later civil rights protection and judicial ruling cases.
Among the more than 10 victims contacted by the reporter, only Dong Wang's family successfully revoked the power of attorney.
His son found that the signature on the notarial service receipt was not handwritten by his father, and continued to send reporting letters to the relevant departments.
The Beijing National Notary Office finally revoked the notarial certificates of Dong Wang and his wife, on the grounds that "the borrowing had not yet occurred when the two parties signed the "Repayment Agreement".
The families of other victims have not come this far, and some do not plan to work in this direction again - even if the power of attorney is revoked, the other party still litigates them to repay or vacate the mortgaged property.
3
This is a long battle. Some deceived elderly people with inconvenient mobility or lack of energy, brought by their young family members, continue to report the situation to the relevant departments, litigate or respond to lawsuits as defendants.
Among the families of the victims contacted by the reporter, except for two post-90s, others have also entered middle age.
After the death of Dong Wang and his wife, the son continued the lawsuit. In March of this year, the son who had been chasing the house for more than 5 years suddenly fell on the floor and died suddenly, leaving a pile of materials: criminal ruling, civil judgment, report letter, loan contract, Repayment agreement, notarized documents, etc.
Dong Wang's daughter-in-law, Wang Hui, continued to run for it.
Wang Hui will be 50 years old. In her previous life plan, she was going to live by the seaside in the south with her husband. She has severe seasonal allergies and wears N95 masks with air filter valves for many years.
Wu Di is 42 years old. After resigning in 2019, he took care of his parents and filed a lawsuit.
Li Guifang's daughter Zhang Yu, who just went through the retirement procedures this year, and her husband devoted all their energy to recovering the property.
The families pieced together information about the case bit by bit.
When they observed the trial, they found that when the members of the small loan company lured different elderly people into the scam, several members of the same company appeared in different identities: lender, trustee, interest receiver, house buyer (deceiver), House sellers, house cleaners.
"The script is similar and the members play different roles."
Wang Hui found 4 victims, and 5 of them spelled out a small piece of the scam - there are many people who defrauded them, mainly from an investment management company called "Zhongling Shengyuan" in Beijing.
The then general manager of the company stated in his confession to the case-handling authority that the company mainly engaged in "small loan, advance capital, and bank loan business", and the legal representative was Yang Xiao.
In another case, the company sold another elderly victim's house worth about $3 million for $1,000.
The buyers were employees of the company who acted as borrowers in the Dong Wang case.
In order to put together this "small piece", Wang Hui and others sorted out the relationship table of the company's accounting transactions with the victim, the victim's loan and notarization matters from more than 10 boxes of materials.
The association table alone includes more than 10 categories.
They gathered together the company's "criminal clues" and reported the crime to the relevant departments in the name of "routine loan victims" while reporting the case to the police in Chaoyang District, Beijing, where the company is located.
"Extortion, fraud, use of violent house cleaning, soft violence intimidation and other means to carry out routine loan crimes for low-priced possession of the victim's property, low-priced transfer of the victim's property for their own, through false lawsuits, soft violence fraud and extortion Money," Wang Hui wrote in the report letter on behalf of five families.
This "fragment" that caught the attention of all the victims finally won: On January 21, 2022, several members of Zhongling Shengyuan Company committed fraud, and one member committed fraud and illegal debt collection, and was arrested by Beijing. The Municipal Third Intermediate People's Court finally sentenced him to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from 5 years and 6 months to 12 years.
Wang Hui has accumulated more than two boxes of case materials, the top of which is the medical certificate of death of three people, one of her father-in-law, mother-in-law and husband.
Dong Wang died of sudden cardiac death one year after being caught in the scam.
On December 25, 2018, after receiving a strange call, his wife said she was going to "draw money to repay the debt", and fell on the street on a winter night, never to wake up again.
Wang Hui suffered from depression and took medicine for a long time, and the seasonal allergies became more and more serious.
Afraid of violent house clearance, she and her son, who had just graduated from college, rented a house near Changping on the North Sixth Ring Road, and continued to pursue the house. "You can't leave a mess to your son."
Since the criminal ruling of the 4 people involved did not mention the ownership of the property, Wang Hui had to file a civil lawsuit again, requesting the court to order the release of the mortgage on the property.
In March of this year, her husband filed an administrative lawsuit, hoping that the Haidian Branch of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Planning and Natural Resources could revoke the relevant mortgage registration and other matters.
That was the last time he ever asked for a room before his death.
4
Li Guifang's pursuit of the house is also in the "fragments" of Wang Hui's group.
Li Guifang was pulled into the scam by his niece.
She remembers that one day in March 2014, her niece knelt in front of her and begged to "borrow the room" and took her and her husband, who is in his 70s, to a service hall.
Li Guifang signed a series of agreements - three years later, when the owner of the new house came to ask them to move out, she learned that the place was a notary office.
In 2017, after discovering that she had been deceived, Li Guifang's daughter took her back along the real estate hall, bank business hall, and notary office to "why the house disappeared".
They found that in a series of agreements signed by Li Guifang, there were two notary certificates of entrustment - Li Guifang "entrusted" the house sale in 2014 to a person named "Cui Licheng" who had never met before, who also worked in The investment management company reported by Wang Hui.
On June 1, 2015, Cui Licheng transferred a house worth 4 million yuan to Yang Xiao, the legal representative of the company, for 2.7 million yuan.
Yang Xiao also borrowed 1.89 million yuan from China Construction Bank to buy a house.
Before meeting Wang Hui and other victim's family members, Li Guifang's case was "alone". On the surface, "borrowing money-mortgaging real estate-not paying the money-losing the house" is not illegal and reasonable.
"In fact, the old man didn't get the money." Her daughter Zhang Yu told reporters that the family felt that "nowhere is right", but did not know where to start.
Until the Spring Festival of 2019, Zhang Yu saw Wang Hui with the note "Cui Li made a case" in a WeChat group for rights protection, and the other four victims came together from different paths.
In June 2019, this small piece of small pieces ushered in exciting progress: the Chaoyang Branch of the Beijing Public Security Bureau registered the Li Guifang case as a criminal case for investigation.
What makes them feel more "fair and just" is that on November 1, 2021, the People's Court of Chaoyang District, Beijing required the house under Yang Xiao's name to be sealed up and "returned to the victim Li Guifang".
The Beijing Third Intermediate People's Court upheld the final judgment.
Taking this ruling, Zhang Yu went to the real estate registration center to request the transfer of the house to his mother's name, and encountered a cold water: "The ruling did not explain how to return it, and it cannot be transferred without mortgage" - if they want to get the property back, To jointly undertake the bank's mortgage loan.
The court enforcement agency advised her that she needed to file a separate civil action to release the mortgage.
Zhang Yu once asked a lawyer for help, but similar pension fraud cases were protracted, and many lawyers were reluctant to follow up after hearing about the case.
They requested the cancellation of the mortgage registration by suing the Chaoyang Branch of the Beijing Municipal Planning and Natural Resources Commission.
The bureau stated in its administrative reply that the relevant departments had fulfilled the "duty of prudential review" in issuing relevant real estate property certificates to Yang Xiao, and requested the court to dismiss Li Guifang's lawsuit.
Zhang Yu saw in his defense that the house "now has two legal and valid seizure registrations" - it is said that another "creditor" of Yang Xiao collected debts and applied for the seizure of the house.
They were afraid that the other party would initiate one after another routine, so they applied for "bringing in the house" and "recognized" the bank loan.
5
Others can only delay, hoping that the other party will no longer ask them to repay their arrears, or "live a day is a day" in the house.
Wang Hui found a new victim while sorting out clues. In order to avoid debt collection, the old man had rented a village outside the sixth ring road in Beijing.
When they received a notice to vacate the house in June this year, Wu Tao and his son went to the police station to report the case again. They knew that this was just a "rights measure" to prevent the property from being auctioned.
Wu Tao once again filed a criminal complaint through judicial channels.
He requested the procuratorate to file a protest in accordance with the trial supervision procedure, find out and recover the whereabouts of more than 49 million yuan of illicit money that Guang Yanbin transferred to others according to law; investigate the criminal responsibility of the members of the small loan company and other specific implementers according to law; and properly handle the remaining problems according to law.
Currently, the case is in the stage of evidence gathering.
Their attorney Lian Dayou believes that the "routine loan" for real estate involves many victims, and the participants have a clear division of labor and are implemented jointly by many people. Moreover, there is a relatively strict and fixed organization, and the implementation is premeditated and planned, which is in line with relevant regulations. If a crime constitutes the elements, it shall be identified as a "criminal group".
Victims should strengthen communication, collect evidence, report to relevant departments, and bring criminal suspects to justice.
The judiciary should also protect the legitimate rights and interests of the elderly.
When the Supreme People's Court released the top ten typical cases for the protection of the rights and interests of the elderly in 2021, it pointed out that one of the reasons why "routine loans" are difficult to eradicate in the "house-for-age" financial fraud is that the perpetrators are often in areas where the law is blank or the regulations are not clear. , making use of the personality characteristics of the elderly and the urgency of seeking investment and financing channels.
Before these old people retired, some worked in government departments, some were skilled workers and high-level intellectuals, and some were accountants skilled in calculations... No matter how beautiful their previous careers were, when they encountered professional liars after retirement, they were first of all vulnerable, Fraudulent seniors with huge real estate wealth.
When Wu Tao first came into contact with this scam, the investment prospect described by the other party was exactly their psychology: the two old people wanted to earn some money for their only son.
Daily life, seeing a doctor and taking medicine quickly consume their pensions, and they have less and less money on hand every month. They feel that in this life, apart from the house they live in, they will rarely be able to help their son’s family any more – the older they get. The larger the size, the stronger the similar psychological suggestion.
When the people from the small loan company asked them not to tell their children about the "financial management program", they obeyed and were immersed in the fantasy of "making a lot of money to surprise the children".
Reality is shattered.
The old people are tired of dealing with waves of routines and lawsuits, struggling and giving up, dragging almost everyone around them into the quagmire.
"At least they still live in the house." Wu Tao and his wife developed a mentality of "submissiveness".
Before their son found out, they didn't call the police, and they didn't dare to tell anyone else.
Like many elderly victims, "even if you are old, you still have the dignity and face that parents have in front of their children," Wu Tao said.
Wang Hui's mother-in-law also mentioned that she had signed the entrusted notarization after repeated questioning by her children.
"There is no 'people' in the eyes of liars. The elderly are walking price tags, marked with real estate prices of one million yuan or even ten million yuan." Wang Hui carefully described the harm of pension scams, hoping that every elderly person, every A family should not run into similar scams.
At the end of 2019, Wu Tao's wife Zhang Xiahui was paralyzed and suffered from Alzheimer's disease, losing many memories.
Most of the time, she sat in a wheelchair or on the sofa staring blankly at the TV. Occasionally, when she was awake, she would say "arrest" and "house" to her husband and son.
His wife died in July this year, and Wu Tao fell into endless guilt. When talking with others, he often lowered his head and wept, and blamed himself for "believing that the pie will fall from the sky" and "doing an unforgivable wrong."
When sorting out the relics, Wu Di found a real estate certificate under the old man's bed.
When the property was deceived, in order to coax the old man to hide from his children, the staff of the small loan company handed it over to the old man.
After he went to the real estate registration hall to confirm, he found that in this unreal routine, this was the only thing the other party gave to the old man, and it was also fake.
(At the request of the interviewee, Dong Wang, Tian Cheng, Wang Hui and Zhang Yu are pseudonyms in the text)
China Youth Daily, China Youth Daily reporter Geng Xueqing Source: China Youth Daily