A father lured into a pyramid scheme by his daughter falls to his death

The case reviewed

A man recently fell from a building in Mudanjiang, Heilongjiang, at half past three in the morning. His daughter took him to hospital and asked the doctors to issue a death certificate so that he could be cremated. Where a death is not natural, however, a certificate can be issued only after the public security authorities have investigated and confirmed the facts, so the hospital doctors called the police.

When the officers reached the hospital the doctors told them that something about the matter was odd, and the officers quickly took control of the several people who had come to ask for the death certificate. At the police station they questioned the daughter closely. Asked whether she had notified the other family members of her father's death, she said that she had not. A daughter who learns of her father's death and feels no grief, does not tell her mother or the rest of the family at once, but is anxious only to have him cremated, gave an account full of doubts, and conduct so contrary to common feeling aroused the suspicions of the police.

The officers then notified the relatives, who were far away in Hunan, and went to the scene, the room where the man had been living. There they found a large number of wheeled suitcases and men and women living separately in two rooms. On the strength of long experience the officers concluded at once that this was a pyramid scheme organisation.

Investigation established that the daughter, Yang, had been a university student and had stumbled into the scheme during her graduation internship. Her movements were watched every day, and under the indoctrination of the scheme's members she became emotionally numb and began to recruit others. She telephoned her father and lured him there, saying that she had appendicitis and needed an operation and that he should come at once. Soon after he arrived he realised that this was a pyramid scheme, and his alertness made Yang wary. She sent a WeChat message to her accomplices saying that her father might have realised what it was.

Members of the organisation immediately took coercive measures against him. He resisted and was beaten, and was kept under close guard even at night while sleeping. At three in the morning he tried to escape again: on the pretext of going to the toilet he made for the window and shouted for help, which alerted the members. After a struggle he fell from the building, suffering a ruptured heart, and died at the scene.

The law

In this case Yang and all the members of the organisation in the flat were suspected of unlawful detention and were placed in criminal detention by the police.

Article 238 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China, headed "unlawful detention", provides that a person who unlawfully detains another, or otherwise unlawfully deprives another of personal liberty, is sentenced to criminal detention, public surveillance or deprivation of political rights, or to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years, and that where beating or insulting is involved the punishment is heavier. A person who commits the offence in the preceding paragraph and causes serious injury is sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than three and not more than ten years; where death is caused, to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than ten years. Where violence is used and disability or death results, the person is convicted and punished under Articles 234 and 232 of the Law. A person who unlawfully seizes or detains another in order to collect a debt is punished under the two preceding paragraphs. A functionary of a State organ who commits the offences in the three preceding paragraphs by abusing his authority is punished more heavily under those paragraphs.

Articles 234 and 232 referred to above are the offences of intentional injury and intentional homicide respectively. The conduct of Yang and the others may already amount to the aggravated-result form of unlawful detention, for the following reasons.

Article 238(2) of the Criminal Law provides for two special situations in unlawful detention: where serious injury is caused, the penalty is fixed-term imprisonment of not less than three and not more than ten years, and where death is caused, not less than ten years; and where violence is used and disability or death results, the person is convicted and punished for intentional injury or intentional homicide. Serious injury or death caused by unlawful detention is therefore an aggravated element of the offence.

The aggravated-result form of unlawful detention requires two conditions.

First, the suspect must be subjectively negligent as to the aggravated result of serious injury or death.

Second, there must be a causal link in criminal law between that result and the suspect's act of unlawful detention.

Here Yang and the others unlawfully detained her father, but his death was not caused by violence on their part; it resulted from the fall during the struggle between the two sides. They are therefore not guilty of intentional homicide, and the case falls within the aggravated-result form of unlawful detention, with a penalty of not less than ten years' fixed-term imprisonment.

Cherish life and keep away from pyramid schemes

Pyramid scheme cases generally involve a stage of unlawful detention, the purpose being to keep the person under watch and restrict personal liberty. In recent years more than one case has arisen in which negligence during unlawful detention in a pyramid scheme caused death, and some especially vicious organisations have used violence to cause death.

One important feature of pyramid schemes is that they prey on acquaintances: once indoctrinated, participants will drag in their relatives and friends in order to extract money. Students with little experience of the world and people hoping to become rich overnight are particularly easy targets. As the saying goes, do not believe that pies will fall from the sky. Vigilance should be maintained at all times against the indoctrination of "big goals and high pay". Anyone unlucky enough to be lured to another city by a friend in a pyramid scheme, who finds that something is wrong, should respond coolly and resourcefully: while keeping safe, find a way to escape or to contact the local police for help, and get out of the organisation as soon as possible.