Police in Liaoning are detaining 13 suspects for illegally raising more than three billion CNY, around 500 million USD.
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The authorities have shut down a jewelry-store chain which ran a leasing service.
Authorities contend the operation, which had over 150-stores, had been scamming people, promising their deposits would be used to invest in a gold mine.
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Wang Meijie heads the company involved in the alleged scheme.
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"We let people try our jewelry for free. Though it was free, we had an agreement with customer on how long they must return the jewelry. They can pay us a deposit and take the jewelry. We collect a lot of deposits from our customers. The deposits we collected were higher than the value of the jewelry."
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Xiu Liang is the lead investigator.
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"The key point is that they would use the lure of significant returns to lure people into investing, even though there was no gold mine to be invested in."
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Authorities say little of the money stolen from customers can be refunded, as the suspects have already spent most of it.Â