China executes six for killing workers in mining compensation scam
- Defendants convicted of luring 11 workers to work in mines, killing them and claiming compensation from mining companies
- Mining compensation scam mimics plot of award-winning movie Blind Shaft
Six men were executed in northern China last month for killing mine workers and then claiming millions of yuan in compensation from the pit owners.
According to a verdict from Linfen Intermediate People’s Court in Shanxi province, the defendants claimed the compensation by posing as the victims’ relatives and saying the workers died in industrial accidents, Shanghai-based news outlet The Paper reported on Sunday.
The six farmers were sentenced to death for murder and were executed on April 12, the report said.
The court said the six men – Peng Wanjun, Guo Dejing, Wang Honglin, Zhang Yuanmei, Bai Yuangui and Liu Xuejun – killed 11 workers in mines in Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces between 2007 and 2014, cheating the mining companies out of a combined 3.1 million yuan (US$460,000) in compensation.
This case appears to mirror the plot in the film Blind Shaft, a Chinese movie that won a Silver Bear award at the 2003 Berlin International Film Festival. The film was based on sensational crimes committed by three gangs in the late 1990s, in which some 200 workers were killed after being lured to work in mines.
The six criminals in the latest case were aged between 22 and 47 and from poor remote villages in Shaanxi.