A wealthy businesswoman in the southeastern province of Fujian has been detained in connection with a fund-raising fraud that reached the hundreds of millions of yuan.

Rich woman detained in fraud of millions of yuan.[ File photo]

Li Baohua is accused of cheating dozens of friends and acquaintances who invested more than 1 billion yuan (US$156.7 million) by making false promises of high returns in real estate projects and oil field development, according to police in Shanghai and Fujian Province.

She also made up a story about being a confidante of a supposed love child of Li Kai-shing, China's richest man, to gain the trust of investors, Fujian's local news portal www.fjsen.com reported yesterday.

At least 10 people were swindled out of more than 10 million yuan and some lost up to 100 million yuan, several creditors said, adding that one invested 170 million yuan with Li.

They have been trying to trace down Li since she disappeared in June 2011.

Li was imprisoned in southern China's Guangdong Province for two years starting in 1999 for fraud, according to the report.

She struggled for life after she was released. But several years later, Li became well-known as part of a rags-to-riches story in which she built up a multimillion-yuan business after starting with a trading company in 2006, the report said.

In 2008, Li founded Xiamen Mingda Real Estate Investment Group Co Ltd and fabricated projects in the cities of Beijing, Shenyang, Tianjin and Nanchong to entice investment.

Li was caught in Shanghai three weeks ago and escorted back to Xiamen, police said.

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