Nine executives of a Chinese online peer-to-peer (P2P) lender's Guangzhou branch were sentenced Monday for cheating the public out of large amounts of money, Xinxua reported.
The defendants, convicted of illegally taking public deposits, were handed jail terms ranging from 18 months to 4 years, and given fines from 10,000 yuan to 150,000 yuan (22,500 U.S. dollars), according to a court in southern China's city of Guangzhou.
The court found that the regional sales offices, set up by Shanghai Yushen financial information service company, had raised huge funds without a banking license by faking six high-yield investment products on the P2P platform Ezubao.
As of December 2015, more than 5,000 investors were cheated out of over 300 million yuan, according to the investigation.
In September, another 26 fraudsters, including Yushen Chairman Ding Ning, were sentenced in Beijing to terms ranging from 3 years to life imprisonment.