Gang of geriatric gangsters busted after reign of extortion, blackmail in Chinese city
- Gang ruled by fear in Yingtan, extorting money and forcing shops to sell them goods at discounted prices
- Members as old as 92 used their age and claims of ill health to obstruct police investigations
Extortion, blackmail and kidnapping are not usually associated with the activities of senior citizens, but one eastern Chinese city has busted a criminal gang for all those offences and the average age of the members is 79, according to domestic media reports.
The gang, with members aged between 68 and 92, committed a string of crimes since 2002 in the city of Yingtan, in Jiangxi province, according to a court report from the end of last year.
As many as 19 of the geriatric gangsters received jail sentences for crimes involving blackmail, brawling, threatening to attack government offices, and detaining people illegally, the court ruled.
Their kingpin, surnamed Liu and whose age was not released, was sentenced to 16 years in prison while 18 others received jail sentences of between one and 11½ years, Jiangxi provincial politics and justice committee said on social media app WeChat.
The ageing mafia operated under the name of Liu’s Family Elderly People’s Association because most of its members had that surname and the family is a big clan in the region, according to the committee – the government body that oversees court, police and other departments in each province.
“They are influential in all spheres, including economics, politics and people’s livelihoods,” the committee’s announcement said. “They are even more powerful than the local [Communist] Party committee or government. They perpetrated a ‘soft violence’. Local residents turn pale at the mention of Liu.”
For instance, the gang forced people to pay a “lineage fee” when they planned to build new houses or move into new offices, even when they had government approval to do so.
Police officers said the age of the gang members and their claims of poor health had made it difficult to investigate the case.
Chinese gangs scam Japan’s Olympics ticketing system for big profits
The members would say they were sick, deaf or mute or have other ailments when questioned by police, but after consultations with doctors, officers concluded they had been feigning illness, the police said.
Another of the elderly gangsters was bailed because of illness and the police had to use an ambulance for two days when they took him to about 20 crime scenes as part of investigations.
One shop owner told Beijing Youth Daily that gang members often bullied him and used force to buy items at below the displayed price.
“For a rice cooker, our price is 150 yuan (US$22),” the shop owner was quoted as saying. “They said it should be 100 yuan, whether I agreed or not. They just left 100 yuan and took away the cooker.”
Dozens of Chinese gangster suspects arrested at wedding banquet
In another example of the gang’s activities, the local government abandoned plans to build a school because of blackmailing by the group during land requisition.
“As a result, our children had to study in Dengbu [another town], and it’s more expensive,” said another resident cited by Beijing Youth Daily.
