Like others before them, Deng Bowen and Zhang Xiuzhi planned their escape to Canada even as they schemed to rip off their friends and business associates in China.

Last December 8, the couple from the Chinese province of Hunan disappeared.

They join a growing number of Asian fugitives seeking refuge behind a soft Canadian system which allows them to wage long drawn out court battles to avoid deportation.

Sources in the Lower Mainland's Chinese community told The Asian Pacific Post that the couple have bought property in Vancouver and are believed to be in B.C.

The Guangzhou-based New Express in exposing the scam reported their flight to Canada.

The paper said Deng and his wife Zhang, both in their 40s, started the scam in April 2002. They circulated a fabricated picture of a Chinese state leader posing with a woman they claimed was their godmother.

The pair said the woman could get quotas for scarce cigarettes from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Co-operation which could be sold to tobacco sales firms in Guangdong, the paper reported.

The couple claimed long-term cigarette supply contracts had been signed with those tobacco sales firms and investors could buy the quotas and cash in with monthly returns of 8 percent or more.

The newspaper said the couple lured many people from Zhuhai, Beijing, Macau and Taiyuan , Shanxi province to pour money into the scheme and enjoyed a good initial reputation in Zhuhai by returning some principal money and profit to investors.

The "godmother" in the picture, later said she was not related to the couple and was a victim of the scheme.

With the money earned from the scheme, the couple set up a mortgage firm, a pawnbrokers firm and an investment company.

China's Public Security Bureau is reportedly investigating the scam after stating that tobacco quota trading scheme was a fabrication.

Among those conned were Macau businessman Jiang Linshan who had reportedly lost more than 46 million yuan (C$6.7 million) and Zhuhai businessman Zhuang Zhihao who lost about 30 million yuan (C$4.4 million).

Of the 26 victims identified so far--mostly businessmen but also including workers and retirees--who joined the scheme, seven said they lost more than 10 million yuan (C$1.4 million).

Victims from other places in China have also continued to report losses to the Zhuhai Public Security Bureau since the case was revealed.

According to China Daily, Wang Jinglun, the owner of a Macau food trading company who pumped some three million yuan into the scheme was shocked to learn that the couple had fled to Canada.

The paper said the couple had opened a pawn shop within a month, a business for which it is hard to get a licence for ordinary business people in Zhuhai.

The couple allegedly obtained extra quotas of tobacco, which is a State monopoly in China, from their alleged adoptive mother and then distributed it to other places through their company.

Deng and Zhang collected money from private sectors at a high interest rate to expand their booming tobacco business. By using one lender's money to pay another and paying interests from profit made from their tobacco business, the snowball kept growing.

But the link was broken when their privilege in the tobacco business was prohibited in early 2004 for unknown reasons and they failed to get enough working capital, Wang told China Daily.

Wang claimed that last July, Deng and Zhang had deceived him about planning a big power plant in Hunan Province, which needed an investment of 10 billion yuan (C$1.4 billion).

Wang then loaned them nearly 10 million yuan (C$1.4 million).

"I trusted them because they had prepared government confidential documents," said Wang. "Even now, I couldn't figure out if their plan was a fraud and how could they make fake documents so real."

The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post in an opinion piece said it's never been easier to be a con artist in China.

"As long as one says the magic words--claiming to be the son or daughter of a senior mainland official--businessmen and local officials will line up to offer money to curry favour, no matter how whimsical the fabrication.

"The beauty of the scam is that it is very difficult to verify such claims. Contact details for the offices of top mainland leaders are state secrets, as is information about their family members," the paper said, calling for more transparency in Beijing to scare away con artists and help safeguard the reputations of senior officials.

The use of family members of top Chinese officials as a shield against prosecution and leverage to attract victims is a well documented phenomena in China.

Among the biggest cases involves alleged smuggling kingpin Lai Changxing who now lives in a Burnaby condo fighting deportation. He is said to have used so-called Chinese "princelings" to help him avoid detection.

The Chinese authorities have alleged that Lai was the mastermind behind a massive smuggling case in southern Xiamen city, Fujian province, which involved goods worth billions of dollars.

Eight people have been executed for their roles in the racket.

Lai fled to Vancouver with his wife and three children in 1999 where he has claimed refugee status.

A desperate and frustrated China has promised not to give Lai the death penalty should he be returned.

Another case involved a trio of Chinese bankers who fled to B.C. after helping embezzle US$485 million in the Bank of China scandal that damaged the communist nation's banking system.

The Asian Pacific Post in February 2000 reported that the three had entered Canada via Vancouver using false identities.

The trio had deposited large amounts of cash into accounts at the Royal Bank Canada branch on Ackroyd Road in Richmond and the Vancouver area branches of the Hongkong Shanghai Banking Corporation and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.

Asian organized crime investigators tracking the three spotted them at a house in Richmond which was once used as a marijuana grow operation and later had information that they fled to Las Vegas and California.

One of them, Yu Zhendong, 41, was handed over to Chinese authorities in Beijing last year after pleading guilty to racketeering charges in a court in Las Vegas.

It was on condition that he not be tortured or put to death.

The handover of Yu was highly unusual for the U.S. and China, which have no extradition treaty but are trying to improve co-operation between their law-enforcement agencies.

According to the Supreme People's Procuratorate in China, Yu is one of over 500 fugitive corrupt officials whom it has brought back from overseas since 2003.

Another high-profile fugitive in B.C. is Thailand's most wanted man Rakesh Saxena who now lives in Richmond.

Saxena, arrested in 1996 in Whistler is charged in Thailand with embezzling C$88 million from the Bangkok Bank of Commerce, which led to a 1996 run on the bank's deposits, causing its collapse and the Asian financial crisis.

He lives in a unique court-approved self-financed home prison while working his way through the Canadian court system.

This month in Bangkok, Saxena's former boss Krirkiat Jalichandra was found guilty of embezzling millions of baht from the now defunct bank.

Government attorney Trakul Winitnaiphak told Thai media, that he was now working to gain the full ruling on Krirkriat's case to send to attorneys in Canada, in an attempt to win Saxena's extradition.

Also residing in Richmond with their children is a fugitive couple from the Philippines--Faustino Chingkoe and Gloria Eng Eng Chingko.

They are wanted by Manila authorities for a multi-billion peso tax scam.

The Chingkoes have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying up real estate in Richmond since they moved into Canada.