Woman admits US$1m Disney fraud

A 27-year-old woman who claimed to be a Disney executive and swindled five people out of 7 million yuan (US$1 million) by offering tickets and other products at a discount admitted the fraud when she appeared at Jing’an District People’s Court on Thursday.

Between January and May last year, Yuan Xiaoting, who is unemployed, pretended to be an assistant general manager at Shanghai Disney Resort and made WeChat posts offering half-price tickets and merchandise. She gained the trust of a friend, surnamed Chen, and four other agents introduced by Chen by providing them with cheap tickets. She had bought the tickets at market price, the court heard.

Yuan then told the agents they could order more tickets and Disney-related products. Some of the money she raised was used to buy full-price products for the agents, while the rest was used to pay loans and for plastic surgery.

When she ran out of money in early June, she told the agents Disney had discovered she was scalping tickets and that she couldn't buy them any more. When the agents became suspicious, they checked with the resort and were told there was no such employee. They reported the matter to the police. 

Yuan surrendered herself to police on June 5.

Yuan told the court that she had large credit card debts and came up with the scheme because she had once worked at the resort as an intern. She confessed to the fraud but appealed for a lenient sentence as most of the money had been spent on buying full-price products for her victims. The amount in the charge should be about 1.3 million yuan — the money she spent on herself, she said. 

The court will give its verdict at a later date.