Photo: web

A court in East China's Anhui Province has called off a judicial auction for a Yugioh game card following suspected malicious behavior from the bidders. It has also emerged that the owner of the card is serving a life sentence for embezzling housing funds.

The same size as a standard playing card, the Yugioh game card, which belongs to a popular trading card game produced by Japanese gaming company Konami, was going for an incredible bidding price of 87 million yuan (13 million dollars) when proceedings were suspended on Monday.

"This auction has been suspended," read the statement from Alibaba judicial auction online platform, "The lot is seriously inconsistent with the actual bid price, and malicious bidding behavior is suspected."

Conducted by the Chuzhou court in Anhui, the item started at a price of 80 yuan, with an estimated transaction price of 100 yuan, according to Alibaba.

However, some of the players later claimed that the card was, in fact, one of the limited edition collection game cards released by Konami in 2019, of which only 500 are available worldwide.

These cards are estimated to have a value of between 200,000 yuan and 300,000 yuan, according to the game players.

The auction attracted over two million onlookers as it span out of control, with nearly 200,000 bidders signing up to the event before it was suspended.

The owner of the card, Zhang Yujie, born in 1995, had been sentenced to life in prison for embezzling nearly 70 million yuan in housing custody funds over three years from 2016 while working at the Chuzhou land resources bureau, according to an indictment from the Chuzhou procuratorate in 2020.