A recently-divorced Chinese woman is facing eight months in prison, one and a half years of suspension, and a fine of twenty thousand yuan ($3,140 American) for fraud, and these stiff penalties are all because of counterfeit arcade tokens. Zhang Lili, 34, a cab driver living in Sanmen County of the Zhejiang province, turned herself in to the authorities after using no small amount of fake game tokens at a local arcade. She spent so much money on real tokens in the arcade that she rationalized counterfeiting tokens to drop the cost of play from 50 yuan to 15 yuan (the cost of producing a single fake token). One American dollar is worth a little more than six Chinese Yuan. Essentially, Lili stopped paying the arcade’s MSRP and bought her game-time wholesale because she was playing too many video games.
She found a website that sells custom game tokens and sent them pictures of her own play money to ensure accuracy. Between May and October, Lili had spent most of the fake tokens purchased and even sold a few to other arcade goers. Eventually, the owner noticed he had more tokens than he started with and realized something was up. But before the owner could even investigate or alert the police, Lili turned herself in. Nobody caught her. So, when the owner grew suspicious, why didn’t Lili just go to another arcade? She was a cab driver in three districts. Surely, she could have found another arcade to play games with a clean (legal) conscious.
Maybe guilt and a noble sense of honor called Lili to confess? Seriously, I cannot even fathom how she thought this was a viable option. China has literally, and metaphorically, crippled people for stepping out of line. That’s a pre-prison warm-up. Try to imagine eight months as a prisoner; Zhang Lili never did.
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