A SHOCKED husband realised he and 19 others had been scammed out of £220,000 after he saw his beloved wife marrying another man on social media.
Two women, a crooked matchmaker and two fake relatives from North China tricked the men into unofficial marriages and received money and gifts before being found out.
The country has 17.5 million more men of marriageable age than women in the same age group, the South China Morning Post reports.
The case surfaced when 35-year-old villager, Yin Cheng, was left speechless after spotting his partner, Nana, tying the knot with a man from a neighbouring town in Inner Mongolia on live-streaming app, Kuaishou.
With the help of family, he tracked down the other husband and went to police after both realised they'd been victims of a marriage scam.
Wife Nana was home for just 10 days during her two-month marriage with Yin Cheng, faking a trip to her parents in another province.
Nana's accomplice, Dawa, had been running the same scam since August 2019, with the help of matchmaker, Li, police later discovered.
Cheng was cheated out of £16,000 while the groom in the video lost £14,000 among other expensive jewellery and betrothal gifts.
Most of the victims were from rural areas and above the average marriage age, a group of men that reportedly have more difficulties finding a partner due to China’s lopsided gender ratio.
Older unmarried men are particularly common in rural regions, where a preference for younger men prevails.
A recent census showed that China is home to 30 million men in search of a bride, partly as a result of nearly 40 years of the country's one-child policy.
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