He is the founder of Hongling Venture Capital, and was once known as the "P2P Leading Big Brother", "Godfather of Online Loans" and "Grassroots Stock God"!
This person is Zhou Shiping!
From a glamorous industry tycoon to a prison prisoner whose wife was separated, he raised a tall building and feasted guests, seeing his building collapse, but he was never remembered by a few people.
On December 7, the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court publicly pronounced the judgment in the first instance of the illegal fundraising case of Zhou Shiping, chairman of Hongling Venture Capital E-commerce Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Hongling Venture Capital Company").Zhou Shiping was sentenced to life imprisonment, deprivation of political rights for life, and confiscation of all personal property.
The court heard and ascertainedFrom 2009 to 2021, Zhou Shiping illegally absorbed about 109 billion yuan in public deposits from more than 480,000 people through the issuance of financing targets on the online platform of Hongling Venture Capital.
During this period, Zhou Shiping and others knew that Hongling Venture Capital Company had a huge capital gap, but still issued false loan targets such as "consumer wealth management", "debt replacement" and "red profit treasure" to illegally raise funds, and the funds raised were mainly used to repay the due principal and interest of financing projects and maintain the company's operation and other costs that could not generate profits.
Zhou Shiping used his identity as the actual controller of "Investment Treasure" and "Hongling Capital Offline Wealth Management" to wantonly use illegal fund-raising funds to raise funds and defraud more than 20.4 billion yuan.
The court held that Zhou Shiping's criminal acts caused huge property losses and seriously disrupted the financial order. The court made the above judgment in accordance with law on the basis of the facts, nature, circumstances, and degree of harm to society of each defendant's crime.
Life imprisonment, although it is the highest punishment other than the death penalty, for a person, this life is over. But it is also difficult to compensate for the socio-economic damage he has caused and the families of victims.
His life is like a roller coaster, rushing from hardship to the sky, getting carried away when he stands at the top, and finally falling into the deep valley at a rapid speed.
Born gamblers from grassroots stock gods to debt-ridden
Zhou Shiping was born in Rugao, Jiangsu Province in February 1968, and began to focus on the domestic market and the value research of listed companies for a long time in 1993.
In '93, it soared from 400 to 1,500 in just three months. In this round, many people made a lot of money, including Zhou Shiping's friends. At that time, Zhou Shiping, who had a monthly salary of only 40 yuan, was carrying a huge amount of 8,000 yuan accumulated over the years, and was eager to turn over.
However, the good times were short-livedZhou Shiping's entry into the market was just in time for China's first bear market, and 1500 points soon fell back to 300 points. After a round, only 400 yuan of 8,000 yuan remained, and it returned to the pre-liberation period overnight.
Maybe Zhou Shiping was a natural gambler in his bones, he was not willing at that time, but borrowed money from relatives and friends to be crazy**. This time, however, he was right.
In 1994, the People's Republic of China introduced its first bailout measure, and the stock index soared from 300 points to 1,052 points, an increase of more than 200%. Zhou Shiping's principal increased from 40,000 to 600,000, and by 1996, his principal had increased to 3 million. Relatives and friends who lent him money back then also came to entrust him**.
Entering the market is risky, and investment needs to be cautious. How many people made a lot of money in the first wave of ** dividends, and finally lost all their money. Zhou Shiping is no exceptionIn 1997, the Asian financial crisis broke out, and Zhou Shiping's 3 million shrank to 300,000 overnightNot only did he owe a lot of debts, but his wife even handed over a divorce agreement.
turned into a "P2P leading big brother" The godfather of online lending finally came to an end
A person who dares to make a bet is not willing to accept his fate. In 2005, with the help of a new round of bull market, Zhou Shiping not only paid off all his arrears, but also bought four properties in Shenzhen.
At this time, if he had done some formal business and made some investments, he might have achieved financial freedom by now. However, the "devil" beckoned to him and pulled him step by step into the abyss.
At that time, the Internet was an era of barbaric generation without regulation. The emerging financial model of P2P has quietly spread into China and gradually spread in big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. As a person who made a fortune by borrowing**, Zhou Shiping keenly smelled business opportunities.
P2P is an abbreviation for Peer to Peer Lending (or Peer-to-Peer). Also known as peer-to-peer network lending, it is a private micro-lending model that gathers small amounts of funds and lends them to people in need of funds.
Under the development of Internet finance at that time, P2P was simply an innovative sunshine industry, and various P2P platforms emerged one after another.
In March 2009, Zhou Shiping single-handedly founded Hongling Venture Capital, China's online lending platform, which is the first P2P platform in China. After several years of development, Hongling Venture Capital has become a star enterprise in Internet finance. Even in March 2010, Shenzhen TV's "First Scene" program tracked and reported on Hongling Venture Capital for 4 consecutive days.
First, it has created a "full advance payment model" to emphasize investment capital preservation
Hongling Venture Capital promises investors that if the loan on the platform is overdue, Hongling Venture Capital will advance the investment principal and interest to the investor in full. This model has accumulated a lot of popularity and credibility for the platform, and its influence continues to rise.
The second is to vigorously promote the "large amount target" and "net value target".
Net value target", that is, investors with the balance to be collected on the platform, if they have temporary capital needs, they can use the account to be collected on the platform as collateral to issue the loan target, and the system will automatically review it after the bid is full.
"large amount", that is, the amount of borrowing is large. In 2014, there were 63 large-scale targets with a single amount of more than 10 million yuan (including 10 million yuan), of which 9 were with an amount of more than 100 million yuan. Large-value targets are generally released in the form of quick loan bids, with higher interest rates and longer maturities.
With the "full advance payment model" and "large amount bid", Hongling Venture Capital has developed rapidly. In May 2013, the online transaction amount of Hongling Venture Capital reached 2.5 billion yuan, and the number of transactions reached 120,000. In April 2013, Zhou Shiping invested another 30 million yuan to establish Shenzhen Hongling Venture Capital Management, and the business is getting bigger and bigger.
Therefore, Zhou Shiping is also known as the "godfather of online loans" and the "leading brother" of P2P. However, the road to the violent death of Hongling Venture Capital is about to begin!
In 2016, the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) promulgated the Interim Measures for the Administration of Business Activities of Online Lending Information Intermediaries, which clearly stipulates that "the upper limit of the loan balance of the same natural person on the same online lending platform shall not exceed 200,000 yuan;The upper limit of the loan balance of the same legal person or other organization on the same online lending platform shall not exceed 1 million yuan".
This new regulation directly cut off the foundation of Hongling Venture Capital's survival, and the large-amount bidding business was completely suspended, and Zhou Shiping immediately called for the liquidation of the online loan business and the change of career to an investment bank.
However, since 2015, Hongling Venture Capital has begun to have large non-performing loans.
In February 2015, the Senhai Garden Project caused a loss of 70 million yuan for Hongling Venture Capital.
In 2016, Hongling Venture Capital fell into a bad debt crisis due to the borrower of the "Anhui No. 9" real estate project.
In August 2017, Dalian Machine Tool announced that the company failed to pay interest in full on a 400 million yuan bond, constituting a material default. Hongling Venture Capital unfortunately stepped on the thunder, 1500 million funds are difficult to recover.
In 2017, the debt crisis of Huishan Dairy broke out, and Hongling Venture Capital stepped on the thunder again, involving 50 million yuan
In 2017, Hongling Venture Capital stepped on Lei Yiyang Group for 60 million.
These are just some of the many bad debts at Hongling Ventures.
On July 27, 2017, Zhou Shiping posted in the Hongling community:Neither optimistic about the online loan business, nor good at doing online loan business, plans to liquidate within three years.
"I've been doing online loans for 8 years, and I'm so tired!Zhou Shiping said.
Zhou Shiping also said: ".Not only did he not make money by making online loans, but he also had bad debts of 800 million yuan. In the future, there is no possibility for such a platform, and there is no confidence to continue to let investors continue to invest in the platform, because the loopholes of long-term advance payments will become bigger and bigger, and one day the platform will explode. ”
The P2P industry thunderstorm in 2019. On March 23, Zhou Shiping published a post in the Hongling community "Although it is liquidation, it is not goodbye!"., officially announced the liquidation of Hongling Venture Capital!
But getting into the water is easy, getting ashore is difficult.
On July 22, 2021, Shennan Co., Ltd. announced that Zhou Shiping, the controlling shareholder and actual controller of the company, had been taken criminal coercive measures by the Futian Branch of the Shenzhen Municipal Public Security Bureau.
On November 24, Shenzhen Futian** issued a notice that 74 people such as Zhou Shiping were arrested on suspicion of fund-raising fraud and illegally absorbing public deposits.
Until Zhou Shiping was arrested, the redemption rate of Hongling Venture Capital was only 12%.
The fall of Zhou Shiping is the epitome of the savage growth of the entire P2P industry. At its peak, there were more than 5,000 P2P platforms in operation, and in mid-November 2020, the actual operation of P2P online lending institutions across the country was completely zero.
This also reminds investors to choose investment platforms carefully, abide by relevant laws and regulations, and do not blindly follow the trend or listen to false propaganda, so as not to fall into the trap of illegal fundraising.