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- A Chinese woman has been exposed in a massive wage fraud scheme, holding 16 jobs at once.
- The scheme brought in an estimated $7 million and involved 53 fake workers, Chinese media reported.
- Wage fraud is a massive problem in China, with at least 700 gangs working the system.
A Chinese woman spent three years holding down 16 different corporate jobs and not showing up for any of them, according to local media.
The woman, named only by the pseudonym of Guan Yue, was part of a massive labor fraud scheme worth almost $7 million, Chinese state-owned newspaper Xinmin reported.
Per the paper, Guan kept track of all her hirings on a sheet of paper and, when interviewing for a new job, would post pictures from the interview in her companies' work channels, claiming she was meeting clients.
When she got more job offers than she could handle, she'd pass the job to a friend, taking a commission on the role, the paper reported, in a major investigation that Insider was unable to independently verify.
Along with her husband, who was also part of the scheme, Guan bought an apartment in Shanghai with the earnings, which were funneled through multiple bank accounts.
The scheme, which involved hundreds of companies, unraveled in January after an internet tech CEO, pseudonymously named by the paper as Liu Jian, saw that one of his employees let slip that he worked for another company at the same time.
Liu had hired an eight-person sales team that had initially appeared impressive, but after their three-month probation period had failed to show any real progress.
He fired them — but soon after, the group's leader, pseudonymously named in the paper as Yang Hong, accidentally shared an image in a work channel that showed he had also been employed elsewhere, prompting Liu to involve the police. Ultimately, 53 people were arrested in connection with the case, per the newspaper.
According to Xinmin, labor fraud of this kind is a massive problem in China, with an estimated 700-800 groups habitually taking multiple jobs from employers. They are, per the paper, experts at getting hired, becoming polished interviewees and boasting impeccable — if fake — resumes.
When they're found out, the cases are rarely treated criminally, and instead are arbitrated through employment law — which the groups are getting more and more adept at navigating, the paper reported.
In one instance, a group infiltrated a company by successfully getting a member hired as the HR representative, who then went on to hire the rest, according to the newspaper.