A group of Chinese hitmen hired each other to commit a murder, but none killed the target.
The criminals were awarded the crazy Ig Nobel Prize, an American parody of the Nobel, in the category of Management.
The events occurred in 2013 but did not come to light in China until October last year, when various media reported the sentences of up to five years in prison for the six implicated in the case, from the southern region of Guangxi.
Story of a murder that was never committed
A real estate investor named Tan Youhui and a businessman surnamed Wei had an unspecified conflict after collaborating on a project, which resulted in a lawsuit by the latter against the former’s companies.
So, Tan decided that the best option was to wipe Wei off the map and to do this he hired, in October 2013, a hitman named Xi Guang’an to do the dirty work, paying him 2 million yuan (equivalent then to about $ 328,000).
However, far from finishing Wei, Xi kept half the money and handed the other million yuan to another man, Mo Tianxiang, to do so.
But if assassinating Wei for two million yuan was not a good deal for Xi, much less was doing it for half of that sum for Mo, who was also intimidated and subcontracted to another hit man, Yang Kangsheng, to whom he offered 270,000 yuan. up front and another 500,000 when the job was done.
The strategy of incentivizing Yang with that second payment didn’t work either, which he outsourced to another Yang, named Guangsheng, for 200,000 yuan, 10% of the initial sum that Tan had originally offered Xi.
For that amount, which would be equivalent to about $ 29,600 or 25,000 euros, Yang Guangsheng saw no benefit in getting his hands dirty, so, neither short nor lazy, he re-reserved half of those possible profits and contacted Ling Xiansi so that kill Wei for 100,000 yuan.
Six months had passed since the original assignment, and Wei was still alive. And he would continue to be, since Ling, the last hitman to be hired, far from complying with the agreement, contacted him and informed him that they wanted to get him out of the way.
Thus, Ling and Wei were hired and took some photos that would prove the death of the businessman, managing to convince the entire chain of hitmen and even the real estate investor Tan.
However, despite being successful with the pantomime, the businessman decided to report the case to the Police and both Tan and these five inefficient hitmen ended up being sentenced to between two years and seven months and five years in prison.
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