Five years after the collapse of a billion-yuan Ponzi scheme disguised as an elderly care service in Central China, an investigation into local government agencies has revealed a pattern of inaction and corruption among officials that enabled the scam to grow unchecked for over a decade.
At the center of the scandal is Golden Sunset Elderly Care Apartment, once a landmark private, nonprofit nursing home launched in the mid-2000s in Hengyang, Hunan province. The project was supposedly designed to provide centralized care and welfare services for impoverished seniors, but even before construction began it became an illegal fundraising operation.
