A Chinese man surrendered himself to the police after his wife and two children were killed for believing the story of his death, which he invented after he was convicted of fraud and intentional sabotage.
The 34-year-old man made a dramatic story of his death, corroborated by the police, who in turn told his family after finding a car he was driving in a river, but his body was never found.
The man did not tell his wife about his alleged plot, and I thought he had died. Three weeks after she confirmed the story, a message was posted on the Internet hinting at the intention to commit suicide and then drowning herself and her two children.
Last Friday, the man surrendered to the provincial police of Khonan, which, in a statement on the application of the Chinese social networking Wei Chi, said he had detained him on charges of insurance fraud and intentional damage to property.
The crisis dates back to early September, when the man bought a million-yuan (145,000 dollars) insurance plan without his wife's knowledge, police said.
According to a report by state-run Voice of China, he named his wife as a beneficiary of the plan.
On Sept. 19, the man used a borrowed car to falsify his death in a traffic accident, police said, after he was found to be required to repay loans worth more than 100,000 yuan.
On October 11, the bodies of his 31-year-old wife, their son (four years) and their three-year-old daughter were found in a swimming pool near their home, according to the Voice of China radio.
The next day, the man surrendered himself to the police.
Earlier, he had posted a widely published online video clip, in which he said, crying, that he had borrowed money to pay for the treatment of his daughter who was suffering from epilepsy.
The incident, widely covered by China's social media last week, raised concerns about the impact of financial pressure on the family.
The artists used #ManFakesDeathLeadingtoWifesDeath (a man who falsifies his death leading to his wife's death) almost 29 million times on the Chinese Weblog.
