Master con woman who scammed Beijing's high society

In real life, her father was a handyman, her mother a bank clerk.

But 32-year-old Wang Ti convinced Beijing's new aristocracy that she was one of them – a woman of class and refinement, with impeccable connections to the top of the Communist party.

Over three years she conned two dozen victims out of nearly £6 million in order to fund an irrepressible taste for the finer things in life.

On Christmas Day, however, China's state media revealed that she had been jailed for life.

Written testimonies from her trial, obtained by The Telegraph, lay bare the gilded life of modern Beijing, filled with intoxicating greed for luxury apartments, fast cars and designer clothes.

"She drove a Bentley convertible and always had the latest mobile phone and a fancy watch," said one of her biggest victims, who asked not to be named because his family is still unaware of the huge sums he lost to Ms Wang.

"She was not stunning, and her clothes were not spectacular, but you could tell they were very expensive. When we met she was always on the phone, talking about business or huge land deals. I though she must have some very high level position, far away from my normal life," he added.

Ms Wang came to Beijing in 2008 from Dalian, where she had been a footballer's wife. After leaving her husband, Wang Sheng, she decided to reinvent herself in China's capital.

She successfully passed herself off as the daughter of Li Changchun, then a member of the Politburo Standing Committee.

Cleverly, she claimed to be the child of a secret affair between Mr Li and another high-ranking politician, Lu Xin, a former deputy minister.

"That made it impossible to check her background, a very delicate matter," said the victim.

She rapidly acquired herself a celebrity boyfriend, Xiao Qin, now 27, an Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast and a senior People's Liberation Army officer.

"I first met him at a wedding," she said in her written testimony to the court. "Afterwards I drove an Audi TT and carried a fancy handbag and spent a lot of money making sure I looked good.

"He asked me out, and over dinner he said he knew a lot of army generals and whenever he went to different provinces, the army leaders would receive him."

Their affair quickly progressed.

"That night, we went to a karaoke club. I sat next to him and he secretly tried to hold my hand under the table. We had both drunk a bit and I found him handsome so I let him. Later, he called an armoured car to pick him up [ ...] A week later, we had sex in my house and moved in together."

Mr Xiao introduced her to others in his circle, including the Olympic athletes Yang Yun and Yang Wei, who Ms Wang later conned.

"I thought these athletes dressed tastelessly. Some of their clothes were even fakes. They thought I was a tycoon because I dressed well, carried a real Louis Vuitton handbag and lived in an expensive compound."

But after Ms Wang's footballer husband cut her off financially, she was forced to find other ways to maintain her lifestyle. She decided on a ruse that has become increasingly common: to rent out apartments, claim ownership, and sell them on.

"In October 2010, one of my colleagues who had bought an apartment from her introduced me," said the victim. "She told me that through her connections she had been offered two apartments in a block in Sanlitun (downtown Beijing) and she only had to pay for one. She offered me a £900,000 apartment for £600,000.

"She asked me to transfer £30,000 immediately as a sign of good faith, which I thought was a bit strange, but then these Communist party princelings are often quite strange.

"Then I met her and she asked me to pay a £200,000 deposit and we signed an agreement. After that she kept calling to ask for money for various things, like taxes. I ended up paying all up front because she told me she was low on cash and then she posted pictures of her baby son on the internet with tubes coming out of his head, so I assumed she needed the money for medical bills."

But as the months passed and no contract materialised, her victim became suspicious and eventually reported her to the police.

"They took a while before they investigated because they wanted to make sure she really wasn't the daughter of Li Changchun," he said. "The police also said this type of case is quite common now. Actually two of my friends have been conned in a different deal".

Ms Wang said she would appeal the verdict, but her boyfriend, Xiao Qin, has disappeared.

"No one ever explained why he was not involved in the trial. The only explanation we can think of is that he is high up in the military," said Tang Junfen, a lawyer representing four of the victims.

"During the trial, Wang Ti said herself that she gave Xiao Qin 12 million yuan (£1.2 million) to open a luxury car dealership. I asked the court to summon Xiao Qin but he did not show up."

Additional reporting by Adam Wu

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