A post-90s post-doctoral medical student from Fujian Medical University Affiliated Union Hospital has been sentenced to 8 years in prison for embezzling a total of over 14.268 million yuan in research funds through the means of false invoicing and forging signatures during his study period.
On May 11th, the “Chai’s Fraud Crime Second Instance Criminal Ruling” disclosed by the China Judicature Document Network showed that Chai, born in 1992, from 2018 to 2023, was pursuing a master’s degree and a doctoral degree in surgery at the Clinical Medical College of Fujian Medical University, participating in the research work of his mentor’s research team and assisting in handling research funding reimbursement as a staff member.
During this time, Chai, without conducting actual research experiments, used a company controlled by others to falsify invoices for the purchase of research topic reagents and consumables, forging the names of several doctors at the hospital, and submitted the materials to the hospital’s finance department for reimbursement.
The hospital transferred the reimbursement funds to multiple companies controlled by the person who controlled the invoicing company, deducting a 10% handling fee from the face value before transferring the remaining funds to bank accounts designated by Chai, ultimately under his control and usage. According to statistics, Chai embezzled a total of over 14.268 million yuan in research funds from the hospital through the abovementioned method.
According to a report by Cai Xin, Chai’s doctoral supervisor is Chen Liangwan, the Party Secretary of Fujian Medical University Affiliated Union Hospital, the leader of the Fujian Provincial Cardiology Medical Center, and the director of the Cardiovascular Surgery Department. Chai, Chen Liangwan, and others once jointly applied for several patents, and the 5 doctors whose signatures were forged are mostly associate chief physicians in the Cardiac Surgery Department at Fujian Union Heart Hospital.
In September 2024, Chai voluntarily surrendered to the public security authorities. Before the criminal case was filed, Chai repaid over 5.243 million yuan to Fujian Union. During the trial of the case, Chai further repaid 2,000 yuan.
According to the ruling, the Gulou District Court of Fuzhou City sentenced Chai to 8 years in prison in the first instance and imposed a fine of 100,000 yuan. At the same time, Chai was ordered to return over 9.024 million yuan to the victimized unit.
After the first-instance verdict, Chai filed an appeal. The second-instance court rejected the appeal and upheld the original judgment.
Academic corruption is widespread in various universities and research institutions in China. For example, in 2016, a doctoral student named Zhang from a university in Shanghai was sentenced to 7 years in prison for embezzling research funds totaling over 860,000 yuan from the school.
In 2017, a deputy chief physician named Qiu from a hospital at a university in Shandong was sentenced to 2 and a half year in prison, with a three-year probation, for embezzling over 300,000 yuan in research funds.