Guan Yue and her husband Chen Qiang amassed enough wealth from the wage cheat scam to buy a villa in a posh locality in Shanghai.

New Delhi: A young woman in China was arrested after it was found that she fraudulently held jobs with 16 different companies simultaneously, never went went to work for any of them but kept cashing paychecks to buy amass enough money to buy a villa in Shanghai.

According to a report by the South China Morning Post (SCMP), wage cheater Guan Yue was busted during a job interview, when as per her usual MO she used to take pictures and share them on work group chats to trick her multiple employers into thinking that she was meeting with clients.

As per the report, the scamster maintained detailed paper records of essential information, including start dates, job titles and bank account numbers for each of her positions.

Even while holding 16 different jobs at as many companies, Guan never turned down potential job opportunities, and when overwhelmed, sold job offers to others to earn a commission, the SCMP report said.

Guan’s husband and partner-in-crime Chen Qiang is also evidently quite adept at exploiting rules and laws which is evidenced by the fact that Qiang has initiated 13 arbitration cases and won all of them, the report said.

Guan’s scam came to light when a company boss noticed discrepancies in paperwork and alerted the police.

In January 2023, one of Guan’s employers, Liu Jian, found discrepancies in paperwork and notified the cops. During preliminary investigation it was revealed that the couple had amassed enough cash in a period of a little over three years to afford a villa in the Baoshan district of Shanghai. However, it was unclear how much money they paid for the property.

In October 2022, Jian’s tech company hired a core team leader and seven other individuals, all of whom boasted impressive resumes and extensive experience. However, despite the fact that the core leader got a monthly salary of 20,000 yuan (US$2,750) and the rest about half that, they failed to deliver results and had their contracts terminated, the SCMP report said.

Shortly after this, Jian found paperwork discrepancies and reported the matter to the police leading to an investigation which unveiled a flow of dodgy funds listed as salaries, ranging from thousands to tens of thousands of yuan, into different bank accounts.

Eventually, 53 members of Guan’s wage cheating gang were arrested. The total amount involved in the case exceeded 50 million yuan (US$7 million).

According to police estimates, there are at least 700 to 800 wage cheaters across China.

One fraudster even had his girlfriend hold a real human resources director position in a company to help run their scam.

In another case, one wage-cheating syndicate tipped off a technology company that another similar gang had infiltrated their firm and then replaced the staff sacked with their own team of racketeers.