Two Chinese men sentenced for swindled RMB 220,000 (US$ 35, 506) worth of state energy subsidy by faking LED lamps clients purchase records and forging public seals in Zhangzhou, Fujian Province of China, according to a news report from Straits Herald.

The culprit, surnamed Huang was charged with fraud by Zhangzhou Xiangcheng Procuratorate and found guilty. He was sentenced to three years in prison and given five years of suspended sentence. His partner, Luo was sentenced to one year in prison and given one and a half year of suspended sentence for forging fraudulent public seal.

Taking Advantage of Subsidies Discrepancy

Chinese government allocates special funds for “energy-saving subsidy” to promote LED lamps. Under the regulations, a commodity user can receive 30% subsidy of the wholesale price in bid agreement while 50% subsidy is given to urban and rural residential user. Some people have taken advantage on the subsidies discrepancy.

From November 2012 to March 2013, Huang bought LEDs with residential user price from Xiamen Topstar Company, the lamps are eligible to  50% subsidy. Later he sold 20,000 lamps under bulk user prices (30% subsidy) to a buyer surnamed Gao, and tried to defraud the 20% subsidy discrepancy by faking clients purchase records.

Huang instructed Luo to forge six LED clients purchase order logs. Luo also forged five public seals and stamped them on the logs. Luo proceeded to send the logs to Topstar and retrieved RMB 18,000 subsidies.

Caught for Defrauding Subsidy

Topstar submitted the logs to Xiangcheng Economic Council for review without realizing it was forged. Council staff found public seals on the logs to be suspicious and filed a police report revealing the crime.

According to the report, Huang illegally earned RMB 223,000.