Sixteen persons were put in jail on Saturday following a two-year extensive investigation on the case which involved twenty-one victims with HK$9.14 million(US$1.18 million) deceived.

The 16 defendants, including seven men and nine women, were sentenced to jail terms ranging from two and a half years to four and a half years after being convicted of conspiracy to defraud in the local District Court.

The court heard that the defendants set up three trading companies in Kowloon and placed advertisements in newspapers to recruit junior female staff between March 2003 and March 2004.

The defendants claimed that their companies had rejected some business deals owing to small quantities or low profit margins and lured the new recruits to form a partnership to take up the deals.

When the victims agreed, the defendants accompanied them to visit some suppliers in Shenzhen where the victims signed the purchase contracts and paid the down payments.

After the victims had fallen into the trap, the defendants told the victims that the buyers would like to increase the quantities of orders and induced the victims to pay further down payments to the suppliers.

When the amounts of the contracts increased and finally the victims did not have enough money to pay for the outstanding amounts, the fictitious suppliers forfeited the down payments and the fictitious buyers also cancelled the deals.

The companies subsequently sacked the victims for poor performance. Some victims reported the case to Police in March 2004.

Police arrested eight men and nine women, aged 23 to 46, between March and October 2004. They were later charged with conspiracy to defraud.

Among them a 38-year-old male defendant was earlier acquitted of the charge.