青島の大作戦―第一話

Preface

This is a true story portraying how Qingdao Jiahe Dadi Technology Trade Co. Ltd. (青岛嘉和大地科贸有限公司, www.zgqdjck.com) – a faux company in China, lure and scam legitimate foreign businesses, from a perspective of a third party.

Part of the names are intentionally replaced to protect the privacy of some parties.

CHRONICLE I: The Bait

[It’s Decided]

“We’re going to Qing Dao this Friday.”

“This coming Friday? But I have an test scheduled on that day,” though with feelings of excitement, Nacel suddenly recalled about the upcoming certification exam.

Coming across a chance for the family vacation is rare enough, let alone crossing the international waters.

When such a thing suddenly pops out, it usually means one thing – Dad’s going for a business trip, so he’s bringing the whole family along.

Killing two birds with one stone, brilliant.

“What time is your tests?”

The exam was from morning till noon, the whole family can catch a flight after noon. The flight time should be 5 hours nominal, reaching Qing Dao during the evening would mean wasting a whole day inside the plane.

Since Dad needs to return back before Wednesday morning, the stay in Qing Dao is effectively shortened to 3 days – Saturday, Sunday, Monday – with Tuesday being the day where the whole day is wasted on the plane.

The air ticket was expensive – 2500 bucks per person, staying there for only 3 days for the price of 2500 bucks is not a good deal.

“I can reschedule my test,” Nacel suddenly remembered the exam voucher is valid for one whole year, it’s not mandatory to sit for it this Friday.

“So it’s settled – we’ll depart Thursday night.” One extra day makes a lot of difference, everybody is happy with the decision.

 

[Uncertainty]

Let’s face it, China is a country known for the very corrupted government officials and God knows how many scammers are there.

Nacel’s Dad is invited to sign the sales contract, how can it go wrong? The sales contract is clearly favoring Dad’s company – and on top of that, it is a USD150,000 contract – upon successful agreement, the dark ages of pouring midnight oil in processing the materials, giving talks, facing stiff competition is over!

Dad did a small background check on the company Jia He (嘉和) online, and found out it is a fairly large corporation involving in a multitude of different businesses.

Furthermore, communication with the company was made by email, phone and fax – it couldn’t be wrong.

Though one of the staff – Liu Zhi Qiang (刘志强, International Affairs 国际部) made a small request – 2 units of 32GB iPhone 3GS as “gifts” to the company’s superiors.

The cost of the iPhones will be deducted from the 5% rebate from the sales, exclusively used to “smoothen the transaction”, as agreed.

Heck – 5000 bucks for a half a million deal – you can even give them the iPhones in exchange for such a deal.

Nothing can go wrong.