Attendance records were complete and salaries were paid on time every month, yet seven cleaning staff members never once appeared on campus. This two-year-long "ghost payroll" scheme was finally exposed after a tip-off from frontline workers.

In June 2026, the Yinzhou District People's Procuratorate in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, filed public prosecutions against Li and Mao. In early July of the same year, the Yinzhou District People's Court sentenced Li to one year in prison and Mao to nine months in prison with a one-year and two-month suspended sentence for the crime of occupation embezzlement.

Li was the logistics manager at a school in Ningbo, responsible for supervising and assessing the performance of the property management company, while Mao served as the cleaning manager for the property firm commissioned by the school. After becoming familiar with each other through daily interactions, the pair began conspiring in early 2021 to exploit institutional loopholes for personal gain.

As the logistics manager, Li's signature was required on the attendance sheets and salary confirmation forms submitted by the property company before the school's finance department would release funds, including cleaning wages, to the property company's account, which would then distribute payments to individual bank cards. Given the high turnover rate among cleaning staff, the pair calculated that inflating the number of employees would go unnoticed, so Li and Mao devised a plan to fabricate records.

Li used the ID documents of relatives and friends to create seven fictitious cleaner identities, while Mao was responsible for signing bogus labor agreements with the property company and falsifying punch-in records for these "shadow employees" in the attendance system.

Li leveraged his review authority to approve the fraudulent attendance and payroll documents, and the school's finance department disbursed wages monthly as usual. However, the salary cards opened under the names of relatives and friends were all controlled exclusively by Li. After funds arrived each month, Li withdrew cash and split it privately with Mao. Over the course of more than two years, the duo embezzled over 600,000 yuan in school property management funds.

Paper can never wrap fire. In September 2023, on-campus cleaners noticed that several "colleagues" on the roster had never reported for duty yet were receiving the same wages as themselves. Growing suspicious and feeling aggrieved, they reported the matter to the school. After a preliminary investigation, the school mistakenly assumed the property company was solely responsible for the fraud and filed a lawsuit against it.

However, during trial proceedings, the court traced the flow of funds and discovered that the falsely reported wages were ultimately transferred into bank accounts controlled by Li. At that point, the "inside culprit" surfaced, and the school immediately filed a criminal complaint.

In June 2026, public security authorities transferred the case to the Yinzhou District People's Procuratorate for review and prosecution. After examining bank statements, bogus labor agreements, and other evidence, prosecutors determined that Li, as a school logistics manager, had used his signature approval authority to collude with Mao in illegally appropriating the school's property for personal gain, constituting a substantial amount, and both were guilty of occupation embezzlement. Although Mao was not a school employee, his collusion with Li to commit the crime jointly by leveraging Li's official position meant he was lawfully treated as an accomplice.

Given that both defendants fully returned the stolen funds after being apprehended, the court handed down the aforementioned sentences in accordance with the law.