Suspects receive millions of yuan in compensation by pretending to be family members of 'accident' victims.
By Kevin Schoenmakers
A criminal gang is suspected of killing 17 people and staging mining accidents so they could reap large amounts of compensation.
Prosecutors in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region in northern China, have charged 74 people thought to be involved in the crimes, Sixth Tone’s sister publication The Paper reported on Wednesday. The gang allegedly killed people across six provinces, starting in 2012.
The crimes are eerily similar to the plot of the 2003 movie “Blind Shaft,” in which two miners befriend another worker before killing him and extorting the company for money on the pretense that they are relatives of the victim. The movie is banned in China.
Fatal accidents are a frequent occurrence in China’s mining industry — often referred to as one of the world’s most dangerous. Operators prefer to keep accidents under wraps for fear of being shut down, which is why the racket is so profitable.
In the report by The Paper, a case from 2013 is described in more detail. Two suspects working in a mine in northern China’s Shanxi province brought in a vagrant as a new colleague. After a few days, they asked him to pick up some tools they had left near a blast site. The victim was later crushed by falling rocks and died. The next day, a woman pretending to be the victim’s mother received more than 700,000 yuan (about $106,000) in compensation from the mining company.
According to the report, one group in the criminal gang was tasked with seeking out victims who had mental disabilities and were on their own, because their disappearance wouldn’t raise many questions.
Another group would bring the victim into the mine, kill him, and stage an accident. Then a third group would pose as family members and ask the company for a large payout.
Online, many net users were appalled at the crimes, in some cases calling for the death penalty. Other commenters point to the similarities with “Blind Shaft.” One user wrote “Films that truly reflect society are basically all banned movies.”
With contributions from Feng Jiayun.
(Header image: Coal miners in Mile, Yunnan province, Dec. 17, 2011. Zhang Yujie/VCG)
