Reborn in 97, I solved a cold case at the Municipal Bureau

Chapter 243 How can this be connected?

When Zhou Yi saw these people appear at the door, but they were empty-handed, he knew that they were no longer a threat.

In the 1990s, the security situation was such that gangsters would carry various weapons, ranging from water pipes to controlled knives.

Moreover, these people didn't seem like thugs, and Zhou Yi also noticed a middle-aged woman behind them.

Which thug is causing trouble and bringing an old lady along?

"Sister Qiao, it's alright."

As Zhou Yi spoke, he walked towards the group and flashed his identification.

The group, who had initially been aggressive, suddenly became all talk and no action, as if they had seen a relative.

Zhou Yi's head was throbbing from listening, so he asked the guy who had kicked the door earlier to speak.

Finally, we figured out what was going on.

This group of people came to collect debts from Meng Qingtong, who had previously used the name of Dinghua Group to swindle money from them.

Basically, it means that Dinghua Group is a large pharmaceutical technology company in a certain province with a market value of over 100 million yuan. It is very powerful, and its products sell well at home and abroad. Even the US President Clinton used their products.

This trip to Hongcheng is to give back to the people of Hongcheng.

Dinghua Group plans to open a branch in Hongcheng to expand its business, and Meng Qingtong was sent to do this.

Don't be fooled by how dilapidated this office looks now. In fact, their group has already bought the land. Once the relevant permits are approved, they will demolish this old building and build a brand new one on the spot to open a branch office.

These people are very lucky. As long as they buy a certain amount of their group's amazing health drinks now, they can not only get the products at a 30% discount, but also become shareholders in their subsidiary and receive dividends every year thereafter.

Meng Qingtong went on and on without any logic, telling them that if they invested 10,000 yuan, they could get a dividend of 3,880 yuan in the first year, and the dividend would increase to 6,880 yuan in the second year. In the third year, in addition to the dividend, the group would buy back the original shares they had invested 10,000 yuan at twice the price.

Zhou Yi found that even listening to one person speak still gave him a headache.

Because it's just so stupid!

This is utterly illogical; it's impossible even for someone with a toe.

Even if Zhou Yi didn't understand finance, he knew that a three-year investment return rate of four or five hundred percent was something even the Heavenly Court wouldn't dare report when taking the account of the Great Sage Equaling Heaven's pacification of the Peach Garden.

But the fact is, not only in the 1990s, but even ten or twenty years later, in an era of highly developed internet information, people still fall for this kind of scam in endless streams.

It's not that the scammers are particularly clever, but rather that the victims have limited cognition and thinking, coupled with the natural greed inherent in human nature.

I never expected that Meng Qingtong was not only a cat abuser but also a fraudster.

When Zhou Yi and Shi Tao found the cat's body in the suitcase, they didn't do anything about it because cat abuse is generally not a criminal offense, since there isn't really a specific animal protection law.

But fraud is definitely a crime, although financial fraud is generally handled by the Economic Crime Investigation Department.

Zhou Yi asked, "So you were all deceived?"

Everyone nodded in agreement. The least amount they had been scammed out of was 10,000 yuan, and the most was 30,000 yuan. That was the guy who kicked down the door.

"Where did you meet this man surnamed Meng?" Zhou Yi asked.

Some say they met Meng Qingtong when he set up an advertising stall on the street, while others say they saw the flyer in the mailbox and came to his door on their own.

The middle-aged woman standing behind pointed at the man who kicked down the door and said, "He's the one who introduced us."

The older brother's lips twitched slightly, but he didn't say anything.

Someone pulled out a crumpled flyer and handed it to Zhou Yi. Zhou Yi took it and saw that the scammers had gone to great lengths; it was actually printed in glossy color.

The flyer included photos of a huge factory, upscale offices, people shaking hands with foreigners, and crowds of people buying their products.

All of this demonstrates the "strength" of this large group.

Then they add a bunch of sensational copy, exaggerating as much as possible, it's all about digging but not burying.

The most outrageous thing is that there is a very conspicuous portrait in the lower right corner: Comrade Clinton is holding a small blue bottle and smiling.

The caption below reads, "Even the US president says it's good!"
Zhou Yi thought to himself, "I don't know what the president was holding. The portrait and the bottle aren't even on the same visual layer."

"You believed it just because of this piece of paper?" Zhou Yi asked.

"He said their products could cure many diseases, such as high blood pressure and coronary heart disease. He said there was a person with stomach cancer who was cured after drinking their medicine for three months and is now perfectly fine," one of them said.

Zhou Yi no longer cares about these people; it's not within his job scope anyway. Besides, sometimes, the pitiful can be hateful.

"Have you called the police?" Zhou Yi asked.

"I reported it, I gave a statement, and the police said they would let us know if they caught this person," said the man who kicked down the door.

Zhou Yi nodded. Actually, it wasn't about informing them, but rather asking them to gather further evidence.

"So you're just going to stay here and guard this place?" Qiao Jiali asked.

Since this group of people arrived shortly after she and Zhou Yi arrived, they could only have been nearby the whole time.

"We don't know where else to look for them, so we can only wait around nearby."

"Officer, have you arrested anyone?" Zhou Yi asked sharply. "Them? Besides Meng Qingtong, are there any others?"

Everyone nodded.

The man who kicked down the door said, "There's another guy, he looks younger."

"what is it call?"

The older brother shook his head: "I don't know his name, and that person didn't give us a business card."

One of them immediately said, "His surname is Tao, and he speaks with a slight local accent."

"Hmm? Surname Tao?" Zhou Yi's first thought was of Tao Cong, who had been to prison, and he thought to himself, "It can't be such a coincidence."

He had originally decided to ignore these people, since their only option was to stake out this dilapidated building, which meant they had no leads on Meng Qingtong.

However, there was a young man with a local accent surnamed Tao, so this group still had value. He decided to check Tao Cong's file and find a photo of him so they could identify him.

If it really is Tao Cong, then he would definitely be much easier to find than Meng Qingtong, who is from another province, since he has a lot of social connections in the local area.

After discussing it with Qiao Jiali, Zhou Yi agreed. The fact that these people had been squatting here for so long meant that there were no more clues left, and Meng Qingtong must have run away long ago.

After talking to the group, the guy who kicked down the door and another man went back to the city police station with them, while the rest of the people insisted on staying there.

Back at the municipal bureau, Qiao Jiali quickly found Tao Cong's household registration information using the information provided by Zhou Yi.

When the photo was shown to the two men who brought it back, they nodded vigorously, saying it was him, and that he was with that guy surnamed Meng.

Zhou Yi looked at Tao Cong in the photo and was shocked.

This is such a coincidence! How can these things be connected?
Who arranged this?
Originally, he investigated Tao Cong to see if it was related to the subsequent bank robbery and murder case.

Unexpectedly, this led to a case involving the Donghai residential community.

Seeing that it was getting late, Zhou Yi decided to go to Tao Cong's house before nightfall to find out what was going on.

The two drove non-stop to Tao Cong's registered address, which was not a residential community, but a large courtyard.

These kinds of large courtyard houses are rare nowadays; they were all left over from the early days. Uncle Lu Xiaoshuang and Grandma lived in one of these courtyard houses.

The reason why such large courtyards have been preserved is simply because of their poor location; they are not suitable for building residential communities, and urban renewal is not worthwhile.

Zhou Yi had seen that some large courtyards could house more than twenty families, with three generations of families crammed into a small room of just over ten square meters, and others building sheds everywhere to increase their living space.

The kitchen was built, but there was no toilet.

Lu Xiaoshuang is one of them. After arriving in Hongcheng, she has been living in the small attic that was built.

Zhou Yi first walked around the courtyard to make sure there was only one entrance and exit, then asked Qiao Jiali to guard the exit while he went in.

He planned to pretend to be a classmate to avoid alerting the enemy.

Upon entering the courtyard, one finds it cluttered with miscellaneous items, with tangled electrical wires and clotheslines overhead, and hens running around freely.

Those who still live here are basically of two types: elderly people who are reluctant to move, and poor people who don't have the money to move.

Zhou Yi saw an old lady drying pickled vegetables and went up to ask her about it.

The older woman was hard of hearing; after asking a few questions, she almost blurted out "Ma what Mei".

An old man came out of the house and gave Zhou Yi directions.

Following the map, Zhou Yi found the location of the Tao family's house. An old woman was sitting at the door, spinning yarn on an old-fashioned wooden machine.

Zhou Yi hadn't seen this kind of old-fashioned hand-cranked spinning machine for many years; in his memory, it was something he used to see often when he was a child.

"Excuse me, ma'am, does Tao Cong live here?" Zhou Yi asked as he walked over, glancing into the house at the same time.

Even in broad daylight, the room was still very dark, and it was difficult to see clearly.

The old woman stopped what she was doing and looked at him. "Who are you looking for?"

A strong local accent.

Zhou Yi replied in the local dialect: "Tao Cong, I am his junior high school classmate. I just happened to be passing by and came to see him."

The old lady nodded, then turned and called into the house, "Congzi, Congzi, your classmate is here to play with you."

Zhou Yi was overjoyed; this guy was actually at home?
The old woman called out twice, and a man's voice came from inside the house, cursing, "What are you shouting for? It's so noisy, you can't even let people sleep."

Then, a figure staggered out of the dark room, wearing only a shirt and underwear, clearly having just crawled out of bed.

Zhou Yi looked him over. He was even uglier than the photo on his household registration. He had small eyes, a flat nose, shrugged shoulders, and tilted his head as he looked Zhou Yi up and down.

"Who are you? I don't remember having such a stupid dog of a classmate like you." Tao Cong said arrogantly.

"Don't you remember me? I was in Class 3. Didn't you like Han Jiajia from our class back then? You always waited for her on the way home after school," Zhou Yi said with a laugh.

　It's almost the end of the month, so if any of you have tickets, please cast one before it expires! Thank you! Thanks to all the generous monthly ticket supporters.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)