The last call took place on July 8, when Li phoned his family warning them not to trust anyone who contacts them for money.
"Do not believe anyone who calls you for money," Li's mother quoted her son as saying.
The body, the notes and the vague circumstances
On July 14, a body was pulled from a puddle in Jinghai District, with no signs of physical injuries.
The ID card found in one pocket showed it was the body of Li Wenxing.
Pages of notes were also retrieved, showing that Li might have been involved in a pyramid scheme, according to an investigation statement issued by local police on Wednesday.
A pyramid scheme works by asking members of an organization to sell goods or services through other participants rather than directly to clients. Previous victims recalled being brainwashed through classes about the product or the service, and at times detained.
The Jinghai District, where Li was working, is reportedly the largest hub for such illegal practices, though outlawed in 2009.
Li seemed to have suspected the company in Tianjin a fake firm connected to illicit and fraudulent activities as he had told a friend of such concerns.
Even before his departure to Tianjin, he found that the online account of the company that recruited him was deleted.
However, that did not deter him from taking a leap of faith, unknowing that it will lead to his demise.
Four years earlier, the bright young man, who scored 630 points on the national college entrance exam, rejected a university offer as his family could barely afford the tuition fees.
The blame game
If the suspected company was fictional and not registered, how could its representative, Xu Tingting, passed the qualification procedures on the online platform?
According to the Beijing News, dozens of college graduates have received questionable job offers through the platform with many encouraged to travel Tianjin.
One unnamed student from east China's Jiangsu Province said he received an offer with an unexpected high pay, but his recruiter asked him to move to Xiqing District in Tianjin. He conducted research online and found accounts of similar experiences that turned out to be cases of fraud, so the prospective employee turned down the position.
Boss Hiring was launched in July 2014, offering a platform for direct communication between job seekers and senior executives of companies. By July 2016, a total of 9.16 million job seekers and 1.54 million company managers had registered on the platform.
Boss Hiring admitted negligence on Thursday in the vetting of potential employers, Global Times reported.
"It is our fault that we failed to update our rules. The incident taught us a painful lesson. We have been vetting all employers on our platform before posting job openings starting August 3."
A reporter from the Beijing News attempted to register as a company manager on Boss Hiring and succeeded, exposing the weakness of measures the company has in place to verify the identity of individuals or entities looking to register.
The reporter received over 150 job applications within three hours, without any inquiries being placed.
Many netizens expressed their anger on China's Twitter-like Weibo.
"One of my colleagues was trapped in a similar organization but he managed to seek help. He badly cried when he saw his father. Pyramid schemes can destroy families," said user @Neal_Hickory_Li.
"I used the same application before. I got a slew of job offers right after registering. I deleted it straight away. I knew it was fake," noted @MaosantangtangWWW.
