Editor’s note: this article was translated and edited from Sina.com and tells the story of a recent ordeal involving Chinese serial scammer, Jiang Haifeng, who lied about his identity and credentials to a divorcee named Xiao Yi on Chinese online dating website Baihewang. Jiang Haifeng eventually cheated Xiao Yi out of 100,000 RMB, while also getting her pregnant. After pressing charges, Xiao Yi also took Baihewang to court regarding their questionable process of online marital status verification.

Xiao Yi (her alias), a 37-year-old woman, met a man on Chinese dating site Baihewang who eventually cheated her out of 100,000 RMB and impregnated her. The scammer, Jiang Haifeng, who dubbed himself as “the Chairman of a listed company,” turned out to be a farmer who was already married. All of the information listed on Jiang’s Baihewang member account was faked except for his name and gender. In the wake of the ordeal, Jiang was sentenced to prison for fraud. Xiao Yi is now looking to take the Baihewang company to court, claiming that its online verification processes regarding marital status is insufficient.

On March 19, the case began its hearing at the Beijing Chaoyang District Court. In order to protect her identity from the media, Xiao Yi arrived in court wearing clothes that covered most of her face. She was seen wearing a black hat, a pair of black sunglasses and a facemask as she made her way to her seat in court.

 

Photo: Edu.sina.com.cn

Impressive credentials garner initial trust

A master’s degree graduate who worked in Shanghai, Xiao Yi was a divorcee who’d decided to find another partner in 2010, leading her to sign up with Baihewang’s online dating service. In order to gain access to the more specialized areas of the website, Xiao Yi eventually upgraded her membership to VIP status.

At the time, Baihewang had no real-name policy on its dating service, though it had something called “trusted membership.” To become a “trusted member,” you had to upload documents such as your ID card, property ownership documents, and degree certificates, with the “trusted member” level increasing depending on how many official documents you uploaded. Xiao Yi knew that making friends online was a bit sketchy, so she chose to only contact those people who had achieved an adequate status of “trusted membership.” 　

Xiao Yi eventually came across a man named Jiang Haifeng, who she deemed trustworthy due to the fact that his Baihewang account had achieved level three of their “trusted membership” scheme. On his profile, it stated that Jiang was born in 1974, had graduated from Tsinghua University with a degree in finance, and was the Chairman of a listed company. When they met face to face, Xiao Yi suggested that they show each other their ID cards to prove they were who they said they were, though Jiang claimed that he hadn’t brought his with him, responding “all of my documents are uploaded on Baihewang and I’m a high-level trusted member. What are you worried about?”

After their relationship became official, Jiang often told Xiao Yi that he was too busy to see her due to frequent business trips; and with Xiao Yi’s work also proving relatively busy, the pair rarely spent time together. Despite this however, Jiang called Xiao Yi almost every day to check up on her, and eventually expressed his desire to have a child with her.   　

Pregnancy leads to Jiang’s elusive behaviour

In April 2011, the pair began to discuss the possibility of marriage, and Xiao Yi eventually got pregnant in June that year. Jiang initially expressed his joy at the revelation, though Xiao Yi soon found that correspondence over the phone as well as face to face meetings with Jiang were becoming more and more infrequent. Xiao Yi made it clear that she was willing to marry Jiang as soon as possible, though Jiang threw up all kinds of excuses to evade the issue. In the wake of these developments, Xiao Yi began to consider Jiang as a somewhat irresponsible individual.  

After becoming increasingly suspicious towards the elusive behaviour of Jiang, Xiao Yi managed to track down his parent’s home in a village in Jiangsu in October 2011; and decided to pay them a visit by herself. Xiao Yi’s initial goal was to meet Jiang’s parents and gain their support for her and Jiang’s marriage, however after meeting his family, Xiao Yi learned that Jiang was in fact born in 1984 and had a relatively low level of education.

In her further pursuit of the truth, Xiao Yi discovered that the “Chairman” position that Jiang claimed to hold was in fact held by someone else who coincidentally had exactly the same name. In addition to becoming pregnant with Jiang, Xiao Yi also suffered losses of 100,000 RMB after Jiang encouraged her to buy internal shares in a company.     

Case comes crashing down on Jiang

Xiao Yi then chose to report the case to the authorities, and soon broke off all contact with Jiang Haifeng. In April 2012, Jiang was arrested, and it was at this time that Xiao Yi discovered Jiang was also a married man. His wife also turned out to be someone he had met online after lying about his credentials—the pair registering for marriage in November 2011 and also having a child together. It was not until Xiao Yi pressed charges in 2012 that eventually lead to the arrest of Jiang that his actual wife found out the truth about him.

Due to his crimes of fraud involving the two women, Jiang was sentenced to four and a half years in prison following a trial in Shanghai. After Jiang was sent to prison, Xiao Yi decided to take the Baihewang company to court in Beijing over the incident. Xiao Yi’s demands were simply to have the court confirm that Baihewang’s online disclaimers regarding the marital status of its users were in fact invalid.

Baihewang suffer scandal aftermath

Xiao Yi’s lawyer stated that as Baihewang is the provider of a dating service, it must ensure its users provide verification of their marital status, and that after failing to meet this responsibility, Baihewang’s verification process was invalid. “We tried to ask them that if they were a traditional dating agency, would it be possible for users not to verify their marital status when they register on the site?” Xiao Yi’s lawyer then added “this is clearly a breach of duty and constitutes to gross negligence.”

Court proceedings are still currently underway regarding Baihewang’s questionable marital status verification process in the wake of the Jiang Haifeng scandal.
 

Source: Edu.sina.com.cn
 

Related articles
Two Men Exposed for Impersonating High-Level Party Officials
Runaway Vietnamese Wives: Husbands Search for Missing Spouses
Increasing Divorce Rates: Is China Facing a Marriage Crisis?

Warning：The use of any news and articles published on eChinacities.com without written permission from eChinacities.com constitutes copyright infringement, and legal action can be taken.

Keywords: Chinese online dating Chinese dating site Baihewang