Police repatriate woman wanted over huge debts
Print Edition
A SHANGHAI woman who fled to Taiwan after running up debts of more than 1.2 million yuan (US$193,000) was repatriated last week, police said yesterday.
The 48-year-old, surnamed Ling, is the first person to be repatriated to Shanghai from the island since authorities on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait signed a collaboration deal in 2009. Her arrest was also part of the mainland’s “Fox Hunt 2014” campaign to crack down on economic crime.
According to Shanghai police, Ling borrowed money from work colleagues to pay off gambling and credit card debts.
She was detained by Taiwan police on December 16 after overstaying her visa and handed over to Shanghai authorities on December 26. She is now in detention and will later face several fraud charges, police said.
The former civil servant told Shanghai Daily yesterday that she became addicted to gambling in 2005. At first she played only mahjong for small sums, but later became drawn to high-stakes gaming machines.
“When I played mahjong, I could lose a few thousand yuan, maybe 10,000 maximum. But on the machines, it wasn’t uncommon for me to lose tens of thousands of yuan in a single session.”
“Every time I lost I regretted it. But I couldn’t stop,” she said.
Ling said that as her habit began to spiral out of control she applied for more than 10 credit cards to fund it.
“The highest credit limit I got was 150,000 yuan,” she said.
By June 2013, the outstanding balances on the cards had soared and she turned to her workmates for help.
“I gave them all sorts of reasons why I needed to borrow money from them.
“But when they found out the truth, that my debts were linked to gambling, they all wanted their money back, so I had to flee to Taiwan to seek help from my relatives,” Ling said.
“My husband had already abandoned me and my 14-year-old daughter because of my addiction, so I took my daughter with me,” she said.
No bail out
The pair went to Taiwan in August, but Ling was unable to convince her relatives to bail her out. She decided, however, that Taiwan would be a good place to work, so after briefly returning to Shanghai, she and her daughter flew back to the island later the same month.
“I thought if I could work there for a while I’d be able to pay off my debts,” she said.
“I knew I’d return at some point, but my daughter broke her leg so we had to stay on.”
Back in Shanghai, Ling’s former employer called Huangpu District police in November to report that she had gone missing after swindling her colleagues out of 1.2 million yuan.
Police investigated and with the help of authorities in Taiwan, traced Ling and her daughter to the city of Kaohsiung.
According to Shanghai police, they have hunted down 55 fugitives so far since July, when the “Fox Hunt 2014” campaign began.
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