The illegal production of maps. Screenshot of The Paper.

Recently, police from East China's Zhejiang Province cracked a major fraud case after a primary school student in Haiyan county found that parts of Zhejiang Province were missing from a map.

An investigation revealed that 36 maps involved in the case were illegally copied and nearly 10 million copies were issued. The illegal business amounted to about 10 million yuan ($1,584,259). In addition, the suspects also illegally printed and sold puzzles that were not authorized by Disney and other brands.

Between March 2016 and March 2021, the defendant, surnamed Wang, made use of his contacts in the map industry to obtain 32 printing documents including maps of 31 provinces of China and China traffic maps published by a provincial publishing company. Later, Wang collaborated with other two suspects in illegal production.

It was not until the September 2020 that a cautious primary school student in Haiyan county checked the map and found that the reclamation area to the north of Jiashuo Bridge did not appear on the map of Zhejiang Province, thus the mystery behind the "map" was finally disclosed.