Ant Fraud Yields Death Sentence

But the truth was that while the ants weren't totally worthless (they were of a large, edible variety) they weren't as valuable as the company claimed, and at some point, investors said, the company stopped caring whether the ants were returned dead or alive -- or at all.

A Ponzi scheme is doomed to collapse because it requires ever-larger sums and an ever-larger number of victims to keep paying abnormal returns to earlier investors. Wang's ant growers learned this cold fact of life in early 2005, when the company stopped paying them.

Angry investors surrounded the company's headquarters with signs that read: "We want to eat! Return our blood and sweat money." Law enforcement swooped in.

In court, Wang Zhendong told judges that he's a simple farmer and never meant to lie to his investors. He said he just wanted to raise money to finance his other companies. He pleaded that he wasn't very good at business.

"He never meant to defraud anybody," said Sun Jingguo, an attorney hired by Wang's sisters. He said Wang invested profits from selling the ants in other projects his company was putting together and that "these projects had prospects for profitability."

In addition, Sun said, Wang "took positive steps to return the money" after he was informed that what he did was a crime. "He did not transfer the assets or run away."

Li Xuedong, 38, a wheat farmer who eventually got a third of his money back, said he didn't care whether Wang lives or dies, but he blames the government for helping build up Wang's reputation and for not acting sooner, saying the authorities must have known something was amiss.

"In Liaoning, power is bigger than law," Li said.

A spokeswoman for the province said officials who had contact with Wang before the investigation had no knowledge of his criminal operations.

Zhu Mingchen, 27, who lost nearly $65,000 and attended Wang's court hearing, which was not public, said he was shocked to see Wang waving to the officials coming into court during the February trial.

"Just like how Chinese elders wave the diplomatic wave," Zhu said. When Wang did that, Zhu said, victims in the courtroom started yelling: "Death penalty! Death penalty!" He said that when the court handed down its judgment, spectators "clapped five times."

Another investor, Zhou Ping, 54, who used to work at a glass manufacturing facility and invested about $6,500 that she had planned to use for her daughter's wedding, said she believes the government handed down the appropriate punishment.

"He should just die. He hurt so many people," she said. "Some people even sold their house, their cars. People don't have money, and they don't have work. What can they do?"

Wang has two chances to overturn his conviction in court and in the meantime is locked up in a provincial jail in Yingkou.

Fifteen of Wang's colleagues, most of them directors of the company's subsidiaries, were also found guilty in the ant-fraud scheme, receiving sentences of up to 10 years in prison.

Residents of the Yingkou area have grown wary of promotional schemes. They said they recently started seeing advertisements eerily similar to the ones Wang's company used. The new company, Ant Power Magic, is promising double-digit returns.

Staff researcher Crissie Ding contributed to this report.