Chinese man accused of defrauding temple out of US$90,000 to buy Porsche
- Police are looking for a man accused of ripping off a temple over its lease of a plot of land to open an animal shelter
A temple that tried to rent land to build an animal shelter claims it was cheated out of almost 600,000 yuan (US$86,500) when a middleman overcharged it and bought a Porsche, a Shanghai court heard this week.
The man, surnamed Yang, was approached by a temple abbot in June last year to find a plot of hillside land, Shanghai Fengxian People’s Procuratorate heard.
Yang was alleged to have contacted a secondary school headmaster in Ningbo city, two hours south of Shanghai, who agreed to rent out a 24-acre plot near the school.
On October 16 last year, the abbot signed a contract for a 35-year lease of a 98-acre plot of land for 800,000 yuan. The contract, it has been alleged, was a fake one, but Yang received payment the following day, the court was told.
A contract with the headmaster, signed on October 23, was for only 210,000 yuan.