A man who swindled more than 1.2 million yuan (US$196,000) from a prospective home buyer has been sentenced to 10-and-a-half years in prison and fined 30,000 yuan, the Jing’an District People’s Court said yesterday.

The 30-year-old, surnamed Li, met his victim, surnamed Yang, last year at a real estate company, where they exchanged contact details.

Sometime later, Yang contacted Li, whom he believed to be a property broker, and asked for his help in buying an apartment in Hongkou District that was up for auction, the court heard.

Yang paid Li 20,000 yuan in cash and transferred 130,000 yuan to his bank account to cover the auction deposit.

Prosecutors said that Li even hired an accomplice to pose as an employee of the auction agency to receive Yang’s payment.

Earlier this year, Li told Yang that he had succeeded in securing the 80-square-meter property and presented his unwitting “client” with counterfeit sales documents. In return, Yang settled the outstanding balance on the deal of almost 1.1 million yuan.

However, when Yang tried to register his new home at the housing transaction center in Hongkou, officials told him the documents were fake.

When he contacted the company at whose office he had met Li, he was told the swindler was not a full-time employee but was commissioned only to identify potential clients.

Yang took his story to the police and Li was detained.

The court said that Li was addicted to online gambling and had squandered the money he’d swindled from Yang.

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