bayedsolid Chapter 201 Big Scam
Chapter 201 Big Scam
Ye Changyan's intuition became stronger and stronger. Behind this crazy money-making business, it seemed that there was a black hand controlling everything.
Those who come here with the dream of getting rich can’t stop.
"Rong Xu, you were accused of fraud and arrested by the government. What happened?"
When Li Rongxu heard Ye Changyan asking about his own affairs, he was a little absent-minded for a moment. Seeing this, Li Baolin patted his son on the shoulder. Li Rongxu then came back to his senses and listened to him start talking.
"At the beginning of last year, I took nearly 800 taels of silver raised by my family and set off for Liangzhou. As I went north, the weather became increasingly cold. I really couldn't stand it, so I slowed down my pace. By the time I arrived in Liangzhou, it was already the end of March. There was still snow on the top of the mountain that had not completely melted."
Thinking of that journey, Li Rongxu seemed to still remember it vividly.
When Li Rongxu first arrived in Liangzhou Prefecture, he was completely in the dark and didn't understand anything. He just followed behind others. It was not until May that he roughly figured out the ins and outs of the matter.
Li Rongxu, who had figured out the ins and outs, had turned the eight hundred taels of silver he brought into nearly two thousand taels by July.
After seeing the madness of the black iron stone business, Li Rongxu used all the silver he had to buy black iron stone.
By September, the black iron stone in Li Rongxu's hands was worth nearly four thousand taels.
It just so happened that during that period, the buyers of the black iron stone in the ghost market did not appear as regularly as before. For a while, the black iron stone was in everyone's hands. At one point, some people were selling them, and some even sold them at half price.
Seeing this, Li Rongxu was very tempted and wanted to accept these black iron stones, so he wrote a letter to his family asking them to help raise money.
Li Baolin sold the land to Ye Changyan and finally sent the money to Li Rongxu.
After Li Rongxu got the money, he immediately bought all the black iron stones from those people.
Just when Li Rongxu had just bought the black iron stone, a buyer of black iron stone appeared in the ghost market. Li Rongxu sold all the black iron stone in his hands and made a fortune. All of a sudden, Li Rongxu had nearly 8,000 taels of silver in his hands.
Li Zhiping and Zhang were stunned to hear what Li Rongxu said. The couple knew that Ye Changyan spent three hundred taels to buy the land from Li Baolin last year. Even if Li Baolin added some more and asked someone to send it to Li Rongxu, the money would only be a few hundred.
Together with the 800 taels that Li Rongxu brought with him at the beginning, Li Rongxu, who had only arrived in Liangzhou in March, had increased his capital of more than 1,000 taels to nearly 8,000 taels in just over half a year. This made Li Zhiping and Zhang both stare in amazement.
Master Ye Changyan and his disciples were also very surprised by this crazy black iron stone trade.
With such a huge sum of money in his hand, Li Rongxu came up with a new plan. At the beginning of every month, he no longer left Liangzhou City, but stayed in Liangzhou City, looking for those who had just arrived in Liangzhou City and were not familiar with the market and the tricks, and then bought the black iron stones from them.
In the winter month, Li Rongxu bought black iron stones and then sold them to buyers. After several resales, the silver in Li Rongxu's hands quickly doubled.
Li Rongxu has gradually gained some fame in the eyes of those who have just entered the industry.
Ye Changyan was somewhat impressed by Li Rongxu's intelligence, as he could actually come up with the idea of becoming a middleman.
At this time, robbery cases caused by black iron stone began to occur in Liangzhou Prefecture. In order to ensure his own safety, Li Rongxu hired more than a dozen bodyguards in Liangzhou Prefecture.
Many of those timid people and those who had just entered the industry came to Li Rongxu, and soon all the cash in Li Rongxu's hands was exchanged for black iron stone.
As the number of robbery cases in Liangzhou Prefecture continued to increase, many people who had dealt with Li Rongxu were even willing to sell the black iron stone to Li Rongxu on credit when they saw that Li Rongxu had more than a dozen skilled bodyguards to protect him.
Of course, Li Rongxu, who had long been immersed in the dream of getting rich, accepted all the offers and put all the black iron stones from these people into his pocket.
But since the winter month, the buyers of black iron stone have never appeared in the ghost market of Liangzhou Prefecture, and people were a little panicked for a while.
Afterwards, news spread in the ghost market that the buyers of black iron stone would not come to the ghost market again until the spring of next year.
Li Rongxu was suddenly panicked. If he had to wait until spring came and flowers bloomed, he would have to wait until March or April at the earliest, which was still half a year away.
The black iron stone in Li Rongxu's hand was worth more than 20,000 taels, and the IOUs he had issued alone were worth more than 6,000 taels.
As time went by, those who owed Li Rongxu the black iron stone on credit were unable to get paid, and their entire fortune was now dependent on Li Rongxu.
Li Rongxu no longer had the money to pay for his bodyguards, so all the bodyguards around him left.
Many people knew that Li Rongxu had a large amount of black iron stones in his hands. On the third day after his bodyguards left, Li Rongxu was targeted and more than half of the black iron stones in his hands were stolen.
When those who had owed black iron stone to Li Rongxu learned the news, there was an uproar. In panic, they sued Li Rongxu to the government on charges of fraud.
When everyone in the Ye family's courtyard learned what had happened, they were all sighing.
Ye Changyan shook his head and said to Li Baolin.
"It seems that my initial judgment was correct. This black iron stone business is indeed a scam. By using high returns in the early stages as bait, the victims are tempted to get a taste of the sweetness and gradually relax their vigilance, which in turn attracts those who enter the game to continue investing, and at the same time, it continues to attract more and more people to join the game. After these people are fattened up, they are squeezed dry and eventually disappear completely."
Li Baolin, Hu Qian and Li Baoqiang beside him all nodded, and then Li Baolin began to speak.
"When we arrived at Liangzhou Prefecture, we took Mr. Cai's letter of recommendation to see Mr. Xue, and then we met Rong Xu who was detained in the government office. After listening to Rong Xu's account of the whole process, combined with the pig-killing scam mentioned by Mr. Ye before the trip, we were sure that Rong Xu had fallen into someone's trap."
Li Baolin looked at his eldest son beside him again and continued with a look of regret.
"Rong Xu was so obsessed with getting rich that he didn't believe he was being tricked. Later, after Lord Xue briefly told us about the recent report Liangzhou Prefecture had received about the black iron stone and the officers and soldiers of Liangzhou Prefecture were investigating the source of the black iron stone, Rong Xu finally realized that he had been fooled."
It turned out that the people who were selling black iron stone in the border market were not border residents from the nomadic tribes at the junction of Liangzhou Prefecture and Mobei.
These people were dressed similarly to the border residents, and spread the news among the border residents that black iron stone contained black gold, which was more precious than gold. They passed the news inland through passing merchants, and at first they cheated a large amount of salt and iron from the people who poured in from the inland.
Later, they even directly defrauded gold and silver. According to preliminary statistics from Liangzhou Prefecture in early February, the inland people who flocked to Liangzhou Prefecture to buy and sell black iron stone were defrauded of more than one million taels of silver.