Police in Chongwen district have rounded up a gang of farmers that they say tricked a foreign company out of more than 140,000 yuan, Beijing News reported on Wednesday.

Most members of the group were farmers and came from a village that police say is rife with such scams, the report said.

Officers said the suspects in the latest alleged fraud swindled the money out of a German company that believed the alleged con artists were making an order for products worth almost 20 million euros (186 million yuan).

The main suspect, surnamed Zhang, is a farmer from Henan province who allegedly created a fake company, called Mu Xian, in Beijing last year.

Zhang allegedly enrolled a fellow villager, surnamed Chen, to join him in the con.

The good-looking and refined Chen played the role of general manager of Mu Xian and Zhang pretended to be sales manager for the fictitious company, police said.

Investigators believe the pair sent an e-mail to the German company in July 2009, placing an order for 20 million euros worth of the company's energy drink.

The German suppliers believed the order was genuine and sent a representative to Beijing in September to sign a formal contract.

According to the German representative, he met a man and an interpreter from Mu Xian in Beijing on Sept 21 and was talked into "bribing" the fictitious company's general manager in order to get the contract signed.

The company agreed to offer the bribe and bought several gold bars and a laptop computer, together worth 140,000 yuan.

In addition, the Germans handed over thousands of additional euros that the alleged fraudsters said was for "foreign commission" and "bank transfer fees".

After forking over the money, the victims found in November they could no longer contact Mu Xian, prompting the enterprise to call police.

Investigators said the main suspects were farmers who worked the fields part of the time but who also connected with foreign merchants through websites, including Alibaba and Europages.

Police said the investigation turned up widespread similar frauds in the suspects' village and the men allegedly claimed that almost everyone in the community earned their living by committing business frauds, Beijing News reported.

The villagers allegedly hired college students to work as interpreters and shared tips with one another on swindling foreign companies.

Before the latest arrests by Chongwen district police, another gang from the same village was rounded up by investigators in Hebei province and charged with a similar scam.

METRO