China miners accused of multiple murders in extortion scam (Daily Mail – June 8, 2016)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

AFP – Chinese prosecutors have charged 74 people in connection with a series of grisly murders aimed at extorting compensation from coal mining firms, state media said Wednesday. The workers are accused of a killing spree that left 17 dead in six regions across the country, the Global Times said, with the deaths made to look like work accidents.

The slaughter was all part of a complicated con by participants who posed as the victims’ family, and then offered mine-owners their silence in exchange for a big pay day, the paper said.

“Once paid, they would quietly move on… since they knew how easy it was to con and extort money out of coal mine owners, they would kill again and again,” the paper reported. The newspaper cited lawyers as saying that such murders have been common in China’s vast mining sector in the past decade.

The country is the world’s largest producer of coal and hundreds die each year in accident-prone mines, though the number of deaths has fallen in recent years. “There have been loads of cases like this in Chinese coal mines dating back 20 years,” Sun Yong, a lawyer from Beijing’s Shouxin Law Firm told the Global Times.

“Most of these people haven’t been caught and their crimes are still hidden,” he added.

For the rest of this article, click here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-3630825/China-miners-accused-multiple-murders-extortion-scam.html