Photo of ancestor money in China Photo: CFP

 Feeling she had been fooled by a clerk and paid for an overpriced beauty program, a woman used ancestor money to scam a beauty salon out of 44,000 yuan ($6,900) she had previously paid to the salon. 

In March, the woman surnamed Li spent a large sum of money on several medical beauty services, including wrinkle removal and under-eye bag filling, at a beauty salon in Shanghai and paid with her bank card. After spending the money, she felt she was lulled by the clerk and that the services were overpriced.

In April, she returned to the salon and asked the clerk to return her bank card payment and proposed to pay in cash instead, citing her family was checking her bank card transactions. When the clerk handed over the bag of cash left by Li to the financial staff, they found out that all of it, except for 200 yuan of real money, wrapped in plastic bags, was ancestor money.

The clerk then called the police. In May, Li was arrested by the public security authorities. She has been prosecuted by the Procuratorate for fraud.

Global Times