South Korean drama sparks fake death-at-sea fraud
A sailor who faked his own death to receive money from a shipping company has been arrested for fraud and is now facing charges, prosecutors in Hongkou District said.
Most of the nearly 800,000 yuan (US$119,085) in compensation given by the company was used to pay debts, his father's medical fees, failed investments and daily expenses.
The Hongkou District People's Procuratorate said the 40-year-old man, surnamed Zhang, was a South Korean drama fan and one of the 20 sailors on a Panamanian vessel which set sail from Japan to Shanghai on August 24, 2011. However, three days later Zhang decided to copy the plot of a Korean drama and fake his own death for money.
At about 11pm that day, Zhang packed a clean jacket, a pair of shoes, some cash and an uninflated lifebuoy as well as his identity card in a plastic bag when the vessel was approaching a local port. The bag was later tied tightly around his waist with a rope. He used a syringe to take some blood from his left arm and sprayed the blood on his clothes and around the deck. He took off the shirt and tore it before throwing some buttons on the floor.
To make it look more real, he also left one of the shoes he was wearing at the scene. He then threw the syringe and his cellphone into the sea and jumped into the water, before swimming several hours to shore and taking a coach to his hometown in Shandong Province.
The fact that he was missing was soon noticed by his colleagues the next day around dawn. They reported the matter to local police after they found the bloodstained shirt and shoe. Since Zhang's body was nowhere to be found, the police probe ended up with nothing.
Zhang's wife, surnamed Hu, received a call from the shipping company about Zhang's disappearance at 11am on August 28. She went to Shanghai with some other family members on September 1 and picked up the items Zhang left on the vessel.
The family later reached an agreement with the company and received a compensation of some 800,000 yuan. According to the agreement, if Zhang was found alive in the future, the money should be returned to the company.
After living at an inn for two weeks, Zhang went to his father's home but lied and said he had killed someone on the vessel and asked his father to find him a place to hide. His father put him up in a chicken barn, where Zhang stayed for about three months.
After being informed that his wife received compensation, he asked the father to bring Hu to the barn and also told her about the "murder" to prevent her from returning the money to the company.
Zhang then took his wife and children to live in another town for the following seven years with a new identity and hukou (household registration) he bought for 3,000 yuan.
However, in November last year, Zhang received a call from Shandong police about his holding two hukou in the province. On November 27, he surrendered himself to police and was detained by Shanghai's Hongkou police the next day.
He confessed to the fraud and told police the idea came from a South Korean drama, in which a sailor from a poor family faked his death while at sea and received a large amount of compensation.
Zhang uses a syringe to take some blood from his left arm and sprays the blood on his cloths and around the deck.
To make it look more real, he left one of the shoes he was wearing on the scene.
