Con artist preys on desperate women

A 36-year-old Taiwan man has been indicted for conning his girlfriend out of 290,000 yuan ($31,084) by posing as a rich company executive, Jing'an district prosecutors said.

The defendant, Bai Changqing, was charged with fraud and theft, according to a press release from the prosecutor's office.

Bai met his girlfriend, Xu Manli, 35, on a dating website in December 2011. He claimed that he made 10 million yuan a year working for a well-known Taiwan-based computer company and owned 30 million yuan worth of property in Taiwan, plus a home in Shanghai.

The two had already moved in together by January 2012, when Bai asked Xu to give him 60,000 yuan for a deposit on a car his boss wanted to buy him. Soon after, Bai asked Xu for another 40,000 yuan under the pretext that he needed to repay the money he had embezzled from his company.

Bai told authorities that Xu agreed to keep lending him money because she was afraid he might break off the relationship when he found out she already had a child.

In these kinds of cases, most victims are women in their 30s who are desperate to get married, said Li Shuying, a press officer for the Jing'an District Prosecutor's Office. They see the loans as a way to preserve their relationships.

Two months later, Bai told Xu he needed to take a business trip to Shenzhen, Guangdong Province. Later, he said he needed to go to Jiangxi Province to see his father, who had recently been in a traffic accident.

Bai's erratic behavior made Xu suspicious, prosecutors said. When she checked her bank account balances, she found 190,000 yuan was missing. She also discovered several valuables had been taken from her home.

She reported Bai to the police, but he had already vanished. It took police more than a year to track him down.

Police in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province, found Bai when he renewed his residence permit there, according to the prosecutor's office.

While he was at-large, he had gotten married with a woman in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, whom he also met on a dating website.