Five jailed over medicare fraud

Five men have been jailed for up to four years and fined up to a 10,000 yuan (US$1,450) each over a medicare card scam.

The men bought IDs online and used them to lodge 43 false claims for lost medicare cards, which they then used to buy more than 94,600 yuan of medicine between June and September, Jing'an District People's Court said.

They then resold the medicine.

The court sentenced Liu Caizhi to four years in jail and fined him 10,000 yuan on Friday. His four accomplices were sentenced in April to between one and four years in jail and fined between 3,000 and 10,000 yuan.

They were all also ordered to return all their illicit gains to the victims, the court said.

Prosecutors named the five as Liu Dong, Li Wei, Zeng Hao, Gan Siyu and Liu Caizhi.

Four were captured by police in September and Liu Caizhi, who helped with the reselling of the medicines, was nabbed in November.

The alleged ringleader, Liu Dong, told police that in early June, he met another man, Gu Qingyuan, at a hospital in Hongkou District and was told to work with Gu as part of the scam.

But after Gu was captured by police, he decided to go it alone to keep making money, prosecutors said.