The Tianjin police were informed that two rural cooperatives in Tianjin received twenty commercial acceptance bills supposedly worth a total of 200 million yuan, issued by a Baiyun sub-branch of China Minsheng Banking Corp., Ltd.’s Guangzhou branch. Originally the notes were issued to Junpeng, which in turn used the notes to pay a company in Tianjin with which it did business. When the Tianjin company took these notes to the two Tianjin cooperatives, it was discovered that the bills were actually worthless because Junpeng’s account with the Baiyun sub-branch of Minsheng Bank was empty. Moreover, Minsheng Bank denied ever having issued the bills. The Minsheng stamps on the bills, the bank claimed, had been forged.

Upon inspection, it was revealed that Lin Min, president of the Baiyun sub-branch, forged 40 10-million-yuan-denomination (US 1.21 million) bills with phony stamps for Fan Junye. Fan later cashed twenty of the bills in his transaction with the Tianjin company and received 200 million yuan. He then used 100 million yuan (US 12.1 million) for the purchase of Zhongcheng Plaza and the other 100 million (US 12.1 million) to pay his own personal debts.

Around the same time that the Tianjin police were alerted to the fraud, Guangzhou police began a separate investigation of Fan Junye. Their inquiry revealed that Fan had defrauded three Guangdong companies out of 250 million yuan through false crude-oil sales contracts, using loan collateral from Shenzhen Development Bank.