The Chinese police arrested a 48-year-old woman who had been posing as a princess from the Qing dynasty, the news agency Xinhua reported.
The “princess” claimed to have 175 billion yuan ($29 billion) in frozen assets, including gold bars, gold jewelry, and American dollars. The fraudster followed a classic “Nigerian scam” scheme. She affirmed that she was a descendant of “Qing Dynasty royalty” and asked for help in returning the assets, divided among eight treasuries/vaults in Sichuan and Guizhou.
The woman promised to share her wealth with those who assisted her in the initial stage of the operation, pledging to return amounts four times bigger than their investments.
In a year and a half, the self-styled princess diddled her compatriots out of almost six million yuan ($934,000). Her scam was revealed when one of the investors took the woman hostage. After being rescued in a police operation she was also arrested on suspicion of fraud.
