Xu Xiaoyun (徐小云) Pictured here on November 10th during her trial

A 41 year old woman named Xu Xiaoyun (徐小云) was charged by officials with having posed as a 26 year old woman with a prestigious background (doctorate candidate and daughter of former Chinese UN ambassador) to target and swindle money and marriage from a 24 year old graduate student at Tsinghua University. Xu was indicted and arraigned on charges of scamming and fraud on November 11th in Haidian Court in Beijing.

Xu Xiaoyun is 41 years of age and a native of Guizhou province. She attended Fudan University but had failed to complete her credits – subsequently receiving her certificate of study in 1988. According to her statements, Xu met her victim Li (name changed to protect privacy) through some acquaintances at a card game on February 9th of this year. They hit it right off and had sexual relations that night in a hotel room.

Xu told Li that her name was Qin Ran, was born in 1983 and is the daughter of a retired Chinese ambassador to the UN. She also told him that she was currently enrolled in a doctorate's program at Tsinghua University, has all kinds of special connections – including a brother working for Interpol – and could use her network to help Li go study overseas at Stanford after he graduates. The two quickly established a romantic attachment.

Going along with her plans, Xu then made several calls to Li, posing as different relatives of the invented Qin Ran, urging Li to marry her. In her confessions, Xu admitted that she could impersonate young and old, male and female voices, without the help of voice changers.

This year in May, Xu again urged Li to invite his friends from school to a dine-out event and solicited 10,000 RMB as monetary gifts for their upcoming wedding. The two were then wed at Li's home, where Xu secured another 20,000 RMB from Li's relatives present at the wedding.

Li became suspicious of Xu's repeated attempts at procuring money, and he checked up on Xu's story about being enrolled at Tsinghua. When the name Qin Ran turned out to be fake, Li realized that he had been scammed and reported the crime to the police.

Prosecutors indicted Xu on account of having swindled over 50,000 RMB from Li with the marriage scam. In court, Xu pleaded guilty to the charges but said that she had in fact made no real gain from the money, as most of it was spent on Li and his family. Records show that Xu had been convicted of fraud on two separate accounts before: she was convicted of a minor scam in 2002 and served 4 months in jail; in 2007, she was again convicted and sentenced to 17 months in prison for similar charges.

Xu's Interview outside the Courtroom

“It is a painful thing to go through being deceived and conned, and it is just as painful to do the conning and deceiving.” After her trial, Xu agreed to an interview with the ifeng.com reporter and told her part of the story: “In my life experiences, I've been conned and I've been the one doing the conning.”

She told about how she was tricked by a man into leaving school for a tutor job somewhere in the country – the reason she left her studies at Fudan University. She was then unlawfully detained by this man and was forced to bear him a child during her imprisonment. She managed to return home after much trial and tribulation, but she couldn't bear the talk behind her back and decided to escape to another city to start her life anew. Unfortunately, she found herself falling prey to another swindler who tricked her into a relationship, only to rob her of all that she owned. It was then that she decided to become a swindler herself, to avenge the wrongs that she’d been done and for monetary gain.

It is hard to believe that anyone would be so gullible as to take this plump middle-aged woman to be the 26 year old woman she claims she was to Li, but the fact is, in the scam that she set up for Li, the 41 year old Xu played the part of a 26 year old graduate student perfectly. No one had doubted her, not Li himself, his family, or his friends.

“I was a different woman before I was arrested.” Xu smiled and explained that she had gained over 10kg the last six months in custody while awaiting trial.

Source: ifeng.com

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