Lady criminals on the increase

Lady criminals on the increase

• Source: Global Times
• [10:33 March 09 2011]
• Comments

The number of women in-volved in "economic crime" has increased for the fourth year in a row, and most cases targeted family and friends, according to a report by Beijing No.2 Inter-mediate Court.

The court dealt with 159 cas-es involving women suspects in 2010, among which 118, or 74 percent, involved economic crime

Fraud is the number one charge against women defen-dants, accounting for 29.7 per-cent, followed by theft and op-erating an unlicensed business.

Most of the women charged had no prior convictions or police record, according to the report.

Women defendants charged with fraud, corruption, embez-zlement and extortion, all came from high socio-economic backgrounds.

Also many women were threatened or lured into theft and extortion by their boy-friends or husbands, said the report.

The majority of the other 49 cases involved intentional assault, murder, organizing or aiding in the organizing of prostitution and drug traffick-ing.

About 35 percent of the women defendants were be-tween 21 and 30.

Judges at the intermediate court found that most of the women charged never went to college and knew very little about the law.

Some of them claimed to have not realized they had bro-ken the law when arrested, ac-cording to the report.

The most severe punish-ment issued by the court in cas-es involving women defendants last year was a suspended death sentence.

Global Times