Suspected con man in his 60s who adopted an array of top-level personas is held on ‘cheating’ charges; case grips public imagination
A suspected con man in China has been placed under criminal detention for posing as a retired People’s Liberation Army (PLA) official and a top scholar to con schools and a hospital out of money.
According to a statement issued by the Public Security Bureau in the Nanshan District of Shenzhen in southern China, on August 19, Ruan Shaoping, 63, was criminally detained on the charge of impersonating a PLA official to cheat.
The scandal was exposed in early August by the news outlet The Paper in a report titled “Digging Out the Details of the Fake Academic Ruan Shaoping”.
The report said that over the past few years, Ruan was invited by a number of primary and secondary schools in the southern province of Guangdong to address pupils on the subjects of patriotism and traditional Chinese culture.
