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Living lavishly is great only as long as the money is rolling in. 

When 44-year-old Hu Qin from Hunan province, China and her husband started a fruit business in 2012, it became so lucrative that it grew into a chain of more than 30 stores across China. The couple amassed a wealth of 10 million yuan and lived luxuriously in a villa by the Xiang River, employed a driver and several housekeepers, and traveled frequently, South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports. 

But poor management caused the fruit business to collapse in 2019 and Hu incurred five million yuan in debt. The couple was forced to sell their home and rent a place to stay. They sold farm goods to get by, according to SCMP. 

The now Wuhan-based family of four has ventured into selling lotus root with Hu herself doing the harvesting in ponds and her husband doing the selling via social media. 

Meanwhile, a 36-year-old Chinese man surnamed Chen was able to live lavishly by hiring women escorts to accompany him to dinner and entertainment and pay all the bills. 

According to Liu, one of the escorts, Chen introduced himself as a nightclub owner and brought a plastic bag filled with 60,000 yuan to her house and told her the money was enough to reimburse her, SCMP reports. But Chen advised her to place the bag of money under a bed as part of a feng shui ritual to attract good luck and not touch it until their date was over. 

When Liu looked in the bag after, she found fake banknotes sandwiched between real money on the top and bottom. She filed a complaint with the police and Chen was arrested. 

Police learned that Chen was actually a homeless man who slept on benches in public parks and scammed unsuspecting women into wining and dining him, and buying him clothes and gadgets. Chen, they learned, frequently visited high-end venues, each time accompanied by a different woman who paid for their food, drinks, hotel and taxis, according to SCMP.

Chen used social media to introduce himself as an agent and offer “high-paying companionship” jobs to women, according to police. He would meet the women and show them a bag of fake money to convince them that they would be paid later.