Our all-media reporter Liu Lixin Correspondent Shi Xiaoshuai Wei Gai Zhu Mengxuan
◆In order to raise funds, Guo registered and established a pension foundation. By renting idle government buildings and other methods, he created the illusion of government endorsement and public welfare, and illegally absorbed more than 1.7 billion yuan in public funds. Later, the capital chain was broken and it was difficult to pay the principal and interest.
◆After the pension fund "exploded", Guo arranged for people to continue to absorb public funds in remote areas and counties, and launched a "nursing home prepayment discount project" in an attempt to "borrow new and repay old". He instructed sales staff to distribute leaflets in parks and other places where the elderly gather, and took people to see unfinished nursing homes on site, illegally absorbing more than 300 million yuan in public funds through nursing home projects.
◆After the crime was exposed, Guo ordered others to burn the account books, reinstall the computer, unify the accounts, and then voluntarily surrendered, in an attempt to "surrender" and receive a lighter punishment.
◆The court of first instance convicted Guo of illegally absorbing public deposits and determined that Guo surrendered. After review, the procuratorial organ believed that there were indeed errors in the determination of the crime and surrender, and lodged a protest in accordance with the law. In the end, the second-instance court changed the sentence and sentenced Guo to fifteen years in prison for fund-raising fraud, and also determined that he did not constitute surrender.
Keeping an eye on the elderly's desire to save pension money to spend their old age, Guo set up a series of traps: Guo first borrowed the fictitious nature of the pension foundation to make money. After the capital chain "exploded," he changed the shell and launched the "nursing home prepaid discount project", and continued to use high interest rates and check-in discounts as bait to continue to harvest the elderly's pension savings. Seeing that the crime was exposed, he burned the books, unified the caliber, and then voluntarily surrendered in an attempt to "surrender" to get a lighter punishment. In this pension fund-raising case involving more than 2 billion yuan, the court of first instance convicted and sentenced the person for illegally absorbing public deposits. After review, the procuratorial organ believed that there were indeed errors in the determination of the crime and surrender, and lodged a protest in accordance with the law. On September 29, the court of second instance adopted the prosecutor's protest opinion and sentenced Guo to fifteen years in prison for the crime of fund-raising fraud, and also determined that he did not constitute surrender.
Pension money goes down the drain
"Thinking about providing for the elderly and spending their old age in peace, without causing trouble to the children, my wife and I handed over 200,000 yuan to the elderly care group. Unexpectedly, it turned out to be a scam." Recalling the experience eight years ago, Aunt Zhang still felt regretful.
In October 2018, Aunt Zhang, who was nearly 70 years old, and her husband were doing morning exercises in People's Park in Zhengzhou City, Henan Province, when they received a leaflet issued by a senior care group. It is stated above that the group is building a high-standard nursing home that will be ready for occupancy in one year. If you pay the prepayment, you can also enjoy a occupancy discount - deposit 50,000 to 100,000 yuan and enjoy a 10% discount on the occupancy fee; deposit 100,000 to 200,000 yuan and enjoy a 20% discount; deposit more than 200,000 yuan and enjoy a 30% discount; during the period of non-occupancy, you can get interest at 8% to 12% of the payment amount every year.
At that time, Aunt Zhang was recovering from a serious illness. During her hospitalization, she felt deeply burdened by her only daughter. After being discharged from the hospital, the elderly couple often talked about "living in a nursing home in two years." The services claimed by the nursing home group exactly met their needs.
After the on-site visit, the elderly couple saw that the nursing home has a grand scale and has 8 buildings. According to the staff, the surrounding environment and hardware facilities of the nursing home are of high quality, and the medical supporting services are complete. Aunt Zhang and her husband did the math and found that the discounted charges were more reasonable and the environment was good, so they slowly let down their guard. Within a few days after the visit, they signed a 200,000 yuan nursing service contract with the nursing home group and recommended the nursing home project to their old colleagues.
But how did Aunt Zhang know that this seemingly safe project was actually a new trap carefully laid by the controller Guo after the capital chain of the previous round of fund-raising scams broke.
serial scam
In February 2013, in order to raise funds to operate real estate and senior care projects, Guo registered and established the Senior Care Cultural Development Foundation (hereinafter referred to as the "Senior Care Foundation") in Jinshui District, Zhengzhou City. He served as the secretary-general, recruited employees to form a financing team, and established more than 20 district and county-level branches in many places in Henan Province.
Pension foundations deliberately create the illusion of government endorsement: they rent idle office space from government agencies and claim that all foundation funds are public welfare funds. In the name of supporting the elderly cultural industry, the pension foundation attracts funds from the public, claiming an annual interest rate of 5% to 6%, and the elderly group is its key target. In fact, the pension foundation has never carried out any public welfare business, and the legal representative and manager of the foundation are all nominees arranged by Guo.
Mr. Li, a participant in the fund-raising, recalled: "In 2014, I heard from a friend that this pension fund had high returns on deposits and was safe and reliable. The annual interest on depositing 10,000 yuan was 600 yuan, so I successively deposited 180,000 yuan." At that time, the annual deposit interest rate of state-owned banks was 3.25%. The annual interest rate promised by the pension fund was not particularly exaggerated compared to other high-interest projects, which created an illusion of safety and reliability.
In order to evade supervision, Guo used multiple accounts to collect client funds, and only a few of these funds were invested in real estate projects and pension projects under his control. Most of them were used to pay principal and interest, pay employee salaries, or for external lending.
However, the performance of all projects operated by Guo was sluggish, and the payment pressure continued to intensify. In October 2015, the pension fund's capital chain was completely broken. According to the audit, in more than two years, the pension fund has absorbed more than 1.717 billion yuan in public funds, more than 654 million yuan has not been paid, and more than 16,000 people have been defrauded. After the "thunder explosion", Guo also arranged for people to continue to absorb public funds at the pension fund offices in remote areas and counties.
Soon after, Guo opened up a "new track" and launched a "nursing home prepaid discount project" relying on the nursing home group he controlled. He asked salespeople to distribute leaflets in parks, squares and other areas where the elderly gather, using "discounts for moving in and interest rebates for non-staying" as bait, illegally absorbing public funds, and using the newly absorbed funds to pay the principal and interest of participants in the early stage of the pension fund's fundraising until the capital chain broke again.
According to the audit, from March 2016 to December 2020, the pension group absorbed more than 363 million yuan in customer funds, of which 208 million yuan was not paid. Among them, after the pension group’s capital chain was broken, Guo continued to absorb more than 13 million yuan in public funds.
It is precisely because of the continued interest payments from the funds absorbed by the nursing home project that the scam controlled by Guo has not exploded.
Such "surrender"
The funds could not be paid, and many victims reported the case to public security agencies across Henan Province. In 2022, public security agencies in various places successively opened cases for investigation. On June 15 of the same year, Guo went to the public security organ to surrender when he saw what had happened. During the investigation, the police discovered that Guo had instructed others to burn financial information and reinstall the computer system before surrendering, making it impossible to identify the whereabouts of a large amount of money. At the same time, he also instigated the financial staff to make the same statement, falsely reporting that "the fund gap was only tens of millions of yuan" and "no accounting books", deliberately concealing the true situation of the pension fund's fund-raising, and also helped the financial staff block mobile phone signals to avoid detection, instigating one of the financial staff to take sole responsibility for the crime.
The behavior involved in this case occurred in many places in Henan. The Zhengzhou City Procuratorate designated jurisdiction. The case of the pension group and Guo Mou suspected of illegally absorbing public deposits was jointly handled with the case of the actual controller of the pension fund Guo Mou suspected of illegally absorbing public deposits. The case was reviewed and prosecuted by the Jinshui District Procuratorate of Zhengzhou City.
The prosecutor handling the case conducted a penetrating review of the illegal fund-raising activities, capital flows, leaflets and audit reports involved in the case, and gradually clarified the full picture of the case by integrating various evidence such as the confessions of Guo and his accomplices, witness testimony, and victim statements.
After investigation, it was found that Guo is the actual controller of the pension foundation, and the public welfare nature of his publicity is purely fictitious. The purpose is to make fund-raising participants mistakenly believe that the pension foundation has government endorsement and public welfare nature. Guo has illegally raised funds in the name of a pension foundation and a nursing home project. Guo alone decides how to use the funds. The audit report showed that during the entire fund-raising process, although funds were indeed used for real estate and pension projects, Guo actually invested only 243 million yuan in the above-mentioned projects. At the same time, Guo pays principal and interest to fund-raising participants mainly through "borrowing new funds and repaying old ones", and the entire payment chain is completely maintained by continuously absorbing new funds.
After review, the Jinshui District Procuratorate believed that the pension group and Guo used fraud methods to illegally raise funds for the purpose of illegal possession. The amount was huge, the criminal facts were clear, and the evidence was solid and sufficient. They should be held criminally responsible for the crime of fund-raising fraud. On June 19, 2025, the court filed a public prosecution in accordance with the law.
On April 27 this year, the court made a first-instance judgment and found that Guo had surrendered. His voluntary confession of the criminal behavior of the pension group represented the will of the unit and was a surrender of the unit. It sentenced the pension group to a fine of 1 million yuan for illegally absorbing public deposits. It sentenced Guo to nine years and ten months in prison and a fine of 500,000 yuan. It ordered the pension group and Guo to compensate the fund-raising participants for their losses. The land, real estate, and vehicles on record were sealed and disposed of in accordance with the law and returned to the fund-raising participants. After the court of first instance pronounced its verdict, Guo was dissatisfied with the verdict and appealed.
Protest! Change the sentence!
After the first-instance verdict, the Jinshui District Procuratorate concluded after a comprehensive review that the first-instance court did make mistakes in determining the crime and surrender. The core disputes in this case are: whether the defendant's unit and the defendant used fraudulent methods to illegally raise funds, whether they had the purpose of illegal possession, and whether the circumstances of surrender can be established.
The prosecutor handling the case analyzed that the confessions of the co-defendants and the testimonies of the witnesses corroborated each other, which is enough to determine that the pension fund's capital chain was broken in October 2015 and could not pay the principal and interest of the fund-raising participants. In terms of finding the crime, the prosecutor's office believed that during the fund-raising stage of the pension foundation, Guo fabricated the nature of public welfare and exaggerated the credit of the project to attract investment in the name of promoting the elderly cultural industry and developing public welfare undertakings. He also deliberately concealed the redemption crisis after the capital chain was broken. Instead, he continued to illegally raise funds from the elderly group by using discounts on the nursing home project as bait to repay the initial capital shortfall. This was an illegal fund-raising by fraud that concealed the truth.
As for whether there was illegal possession, the procuratorial organ analyzed the audit report and found that the funds Guo invested in the business project were seriously inconsistent with the scale of the fund-raising. He relied on "borrowing new and repaying old" rolling payments for a long time. After the incident, he destroyed financial information and reinstalled the computer system, resulting in the uncertainty of the purpose and destination of hundreds of millions of yuan of funds. It should be determined that the pension group and Guo had illegal possession, and their behavior met the elements of the crime of fund-raising fraud.
"The establishment of self-surrender requires the wrongdoer to truthfully confess his crime after surrendering to the case." The prosecutor handling the case further pointed out, "Guo committed acts such as destroying evidence and colluding with confessions to hinder the investigation before surrendering. After surrendering, he not only failed to confess all the facts of illegal fund-raising, but also avoided talking about the actual situation of illegally raising more than 1.7 billion yuan in pension funds, covering up and denying the use of funds, destroying accounts, etc. This does not constitute a truthful confession of his main crime and should not be considered a surrender."
On May 8 this year, the Jinshui District Procuratorate filed a protest in accordance with the law.
On September 29, after a public trial, the second-instance court fully adopted the prosecutor's protest opinion and determined that the defendant unit and the defendant did not surrender. It sentenced the pension group to a fine of 2 million yuan for the crime of fund-raising fraud. It sentenced Guo to 15 years in prison and a fine of 1 million yuan. It maintained the decision of the original trial to refund the losses of the fund-raising participants, seal up the land, real estate, and vehicles on record, and return the funds to the participants after disposing of them in accordance with the law.
It is reported that, except for Guo, other suspects in the case have been sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment and fines by the court.
