Criminal gang forged seals to provide false stop-and-account services and sentenced 12 suspects

Blue Whale News, February 27 (Reporter Huang Yujie)In the name of a legal consulting company, the criminal gang forged seals to produce more than 3000 certificates of serious illness, income certificates, difficulty certificates and other materials, and illegally provided services to suspend accounts and defer debts, allowing more than 3000 customers to muddle through.

Recently, after a public prosecution was filed by the Procuratorate of Yunmeng County, Hubei Province, the court sentenced 12 people including Li and Zheng to two years, one month to ten months in prison for the crime of forging seals of state organs and the crime of forging seals of companies, enterprises and institutions. Probation was applied to some accomplices, and each was fined 12,000 yuan to 4000 yuan.

Stop the whole story of the account scam

In February 2022, due to his inability to repay his credit card debt, Zhao met the salesperson Deng while consulting online to stop the debit service. Under Deng’s guidance, Zhao successfully stopped and posted the arrears. Zhao found that many friends around him had encountered situations such as credit card collections and online loan arrears. He felt that establishing a stop-and-payment service could not only help people solve their debt difficulties, but also collect service fees to make money, so he discussed with Deng, Li and Huang to establish a company to provide this business service.

In June 2022, Deng, Li, Huang, and Zhao jointly established a legal consulting company, which is mainly engaged in directly helping customers apply for credit card expiration bills and extension, installment, suspension and suspension of online loans from banks and online lending platforms.

In order to further expand their business, from October 2022 to August 2023, Deng and others successively registered and established four legal consulting companies. Li and others use the online platform to channel customers who have needs such as stopping accounts. The company’s salesmen communicate with the corresponding institutions as customers in response to the business needs put forward by the customers and learn the required supporting materials. Since most customers were unable to provide supporting materials, the salesperson pushed the WeChat account of Zheng and others who were full-time forging supporting materials to the customers. After Zheng and others charged customers, they forged corresponding supporting materials, and the salesperson directly or assisted customers in uploading the supporting materials to the customer service systems of various online lending platforms. After the application is approved, the salesperson charges the customer a service fee.

On December 12, 2023, a group reported that its subsidiaries had used big data analysis and comparison and found that a legal consulting company in Yunmeng had used forged hospital cancer diagnosis certificates, hospitalization fee bills and other critical disease certification materials to provide more than 200 customers applied to the group’s online lending platform for the suspension and suspension of overdue debts, resulting in the group’s failure to recover overdue principal and interest on time totaling more than 3.53 million yuan. After a preliminary investigation, the public security organ filed a case on January 3, 2024. After grasping the company’s operations and the movements of core personnel, the public security organs promptly launched arrest operations and arrested nine people including Zheng and Xiao from January 8 to February 22, 2024. Feeling that they could not escape legal sanctions, in March, Huang, Li and Zhao surrendered themselves to the public security organs.

A large number of forged tools and materials were seized, and as many as 1700 borrowers were involved in the case

The public security organs seized more than 400 mobile phones, 23 computers, a large number of customer information and work performance forms at the company’s office. They seized 99 seals, more than 1700 sets of medical records, as well as photosensitive seal machines, printers and other related machinery and equipment in Zheng’s car and residence. After preliminary investigation, more than 1700 borrowers involved in the case across the country used false certificates made by the companies involved to defraud the loan platform’s relief policies for users, achieving the purpose of stopping and paying accounts.

After the case was filed for investigation, the Yunmeng County Procuratorate was invited to intervene in accordance with the law to guide the public security organs to promptly seize important physical evidence, extract electronic data and transaction records, etc., clarify the occurrence and development of the crime, and clarify the specific behaviors of each participant. After identification and verification, the public security organs found that the seals and supporting materials seized were forged. After the investigation was completed by the public security organ, the case was transferred to the Yunmeng County Procuratorate for review and prosecution.

During the review and prosecution stage, the prosecutor in charge found that the sentencing evidence in the case was insufficient, that is, most criminal suspects could not correspond to specific fraud performance. Except for Zheng who can solve the problem of conviction and sentencing based on evidence such as seals, counterfeit equipment, and paper materials seized on the spot, the other three company leaders, two business managers, and six docking personnel cannot be directly related to the fraudulent performance. The sentencing problem is difficult to solve.

Illegal collection of more than 10 million in service fees

After careful thinking and communicating with investigators many times, the prosecutor determined the solution to the data collision problem, that is, through the keywords such as customer names, participant WeChat signals, and company names appearing in the WeChat Group chats on the criminal suspect’s mobile phone, the data collision comparison was carried out with keywords such as customer names appearing in Zheng’s mobile phone’s chat records with customers and paper certificates, and finally calculated the corresponding fraud performance of the five companies involved in the case and other criminal suspects. It was recognized by various criminal suspects and defenders.

The procuratorate reviewed and found in accordance with the law that as of January 2024, in order to seek illegal benefits, Li and other 12 people and the company involved in the case claimed to provide services such as debt negotiation and debt optimization by impersonating legal personnel or forging legal qualifications or professional identities. Attract those with overdue financial loans. Subsequently, through the above-mentioned methods, a total of 99 seals of state agencies, companies, enterprises, and institutions, more than 3200 sets of medical records, more than 280 income certificates of companies and enterprises, and more than 20 difficulty certificates of subdistrict offices were forged, allowing more than 3000 people across the country to muddle through the situation and illegally charged more than 10 million yuan in service fees.

On August 8, 2024, the Yunmeng County Procuratorate filed public prosecutions against 12 people including Li and Zheng on suspicion of forging seals of state organs and forging seals of companies, enterprises and institutions. On December 17 of the same year, the court opened a hearing to hear the case. At the trial site, all 12 people including Li and Zheng pleaded guilty. The court sentenced Li, Zheng and other 12 people to fixed-term imprisonment of two years, one month to ten months for the crime of forging seals of state organs and the crime of forging seals of companies, enterprises and institutions. Probation was applied to some accomplices and each was fined 12,000 yuan to 4000 yuan.

While handling cases in accordance with the law, the Yunmeng County Procuratorate actively carried out the work of recovering stolen goods and recovering losses. By guiding the public security organs to collect evidence related to funds and put forward opinions on the handling of property involved in the case, it also strengthened cooperation with relevant departments such as public security and courts to promptly freeze the funds in the accounts of the company involved in the case and property involved in the case, and urged and guided many suspects to withdraw their illegal gains totaling more than 4 million yuan.