Chinese national on expired visa butchered wealthy roommate, used her identity in $700K fraud scheme to pay off his debts: Why wont you die?
A man in Australia tried to pull a not-so-talented “Mr.Ripley” by killing his wealthy female roommate, cramming her corpse into a “body box” and then stealing her identity to net $700,000, authorities say.“Why won’t you die?’’ annoyed sicko Yang Zhao hissed as he fatally choked Qiong Yan, 29, according to prosecutors.Zhao, 30, who went on trial in a Queensland court Monday for the slaying, allegedly killed Yan in the Brisbane suburb of Hamilton in 2020 and took over her identity to pay off his heavy gambling debt and market losses.His twisted scheme included bilking his dead victim’s unsuspecting mom out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by posing as her daughter — and selling off Yan’s $300,000 Porsche Panamera SUV, officials said.“[Zhao] needed money.
He lost money.He killed [Yan].
He posed as her for a while.He took her money,’ Crown prosecutor Chris Cook told the court.“Murdering for money can be a profitable crime if you get away with it.’’Zhao, a Chinese national who overstayed his student visa, brutally beat and strangled Yan, also a Chinese national who worked as a migration agency director, reports said.The jury Monday watched video from Zhao’s interrogation with police after cops discovered Yan’s body in July 2021.“I sat in front of her and hit her on her head three times,” Zhao said in the chilling footage.
“I think I go crazy.I ask her why she wouldn’t die.’’He went to a nearby hardware store at some point, bought a large toolbox, workman gloves and duct tape — and went about concealing his victim’s body, according to prosecutors.He later told cops he stashed the corpse in a “body box,’’ what he called the oversized 6-gallon toolbox in which police found Yan’s badly decomposed remains.While keeping the victim’s body hidden and pretending to be her, Zhao used Yan’s phone and banking apps to steal and also con her family and friends, authorities said.The unemployed Zhao allegedly sent...