Where it all began

Attendance records were complete, and salaries were paid on time every month—yet seven janitorial staff members had never once appeared on campus. This staged scheme, which stretched on for more than two years, was ultimately exposed after a frontline employee reported the irregularities. In June 2026, the Yinzhou District Procuratorate in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, brought charges against Li and Mao. By early July of the same year, the Yinzhou District People's Court handed down verdicts: Li was sentenced to one year in prison for embezzlement, while Mao received a nine-month jail term with a two-year probation period.

The inside story

Li was the logistics manager at a school in Ningbo, responsible for supervising and evaluating the property management company's services. Mao, meanwhile, served as the cleaning manager for the property firm commissioned by the school. After getting to know each other through their day-to-day dealings, the pair began collaborating in early 2021 to take advantage of system loopholes for personal gain.

As logistics manager, Li had to sign off on the attendance sheets and payroll confirmations submitted by the property company before the school's finance department would release funds—covering cleaning wages—to the property firm, which then distributed the money to employees' personal bank cards. Recognizing that cleaning positions saw frequent turnover and that inflating headcount would be easy to overlook, Li and Mao hatched a plan to fabricate the scheme.

Li used identity documents belonging to relatives and friends to create seven ghost workers as so-called cleaners. Mao took charge of signing false labor agreements with the property company and forged check-in records for these shadow employees in the attendance system. Taking advantage of his review authority, Li signed off on the falsified attendance and payroll records, with the school's finance department disbursing wages every month. The salary cards opened under the names of relatives and friends were all controlled exclusively by Li. After the funds arrived each month, Li would withdraw the cash and privately share the proceeds with Mao, embezzling a cumulative total of over 600,000 yuan from the school's property funds over a period of more than two years.

How the fraud was uncovered

Paper can never wrap a fire forever. In September 2023, cleaners on campus noticed that several names on the roster whom they'd never seen show up for work were receiving the same wages as they were, gradually growing suspicious and feeling a sense of unfairness. They promptly reported the matter to the school. An initial internal review led the school to wrongly assume the property company was solely responsible for the fraud, prompting a civil lawsuit against the firm. However, while examining the flow of funds during trial, the court discovered that the inflated wages were actually being funneled into bank accounts controlled by Li. The insider behind the scheme was finally revealed, and the school immediately filed a criminal complaint.

The court's ruling

In June 2026, the public security authority transferred the case to the Yinzhou District Procuratorate for review and prosecution. After examining bank statements, false labor agreements, and other evidence, prosecutors concluded that Li, in his capacity as the school's logistics manager, had abused his signature authority by conspiring with Mao to unlawfully appropriate school property for their own benefit on a significant scale, meaning both were liable for the crime of duty embezzlement. Though Mao was not a school employee, his collusion with Li to execute the crime through Li's official position made him an accomplice under the law. Given that both fully returned the embezzled funds after being brought to justice, the court issued the aforementioned sentences in accordance with the law.

Advice from prosecutors

The prosecutor handling the case pointed out that the crime of duty embezzlement depends not on one's rank, but on whether authority has been abused. This incident exposed supervision gaps in areas such as staff recruitment, attendance verification, and payroll distribution, underscoring the importance of substantive oversight over outsourced services rather than mere rubber-stamping. Meanwhile, the whistleblowing by frontline employees proved critical, and organizations should guarantee smooth reporting channels while protecting the rights of informants. The bottom line of integrity is not to be crossed, and any act of self-dealing through entrusted power will inevitably carry legal consequences.