2026-07-22

The Identification and Punishment of Contract Fraud Crimes of "Car Rental Scams"

Author：Wang Guan

Preface:

The logistics company fabricated the dispatching capability to deceive the drivers into renting vehicles from the company and paying performance guarantees, and then defrauded the drivers of their rental fees and guarantees after they failed to fulfill the contract. This constitutes the crime of contract fraud. The existence of the illegal possession motive should be judged from aspects such as the company's performance capability, the main sources of the company's profits, and the specific uses of the guarantees. The crime of contract fraud should be distinguished from contract disputes based on aspects such as the willingness to fulfill the contract, the degree of fraud, and the performance behavior. The participants of the logistics company should be classified as the main managers, sales personnel, or non-sales personnel. Among them, the main managers are the principal offenders, while the sales personnel are generally regarded as accomplices. For non-sales personnel, there is theoretically room for non-criminal handling, and at least further lenient punishment should be imposed on them based on the basis of being an accomplice.

Recently, the program "Today's Legal Affairs" aired a program titled "The Rental Car Scam Behind the High Salary", which detailed the contract fraud criminal pattern of logistics companies defrauding drivers of their deposit and rent. The specific criminal method is as follows: The logistics company posts advertisements offering high salaries to recruit truck drivers, attracting many truck drivers to apply. Then, they sell trucks to the drivers through the driver leasing company, requiring them to pay rent and deposit, and have the sales representatives verbally promise that the company will frequently dispatch orders to ensure that the drivers can make money after paying the rent. During the actual implementation, the logistics company has no fixed logistics orders, and a small number of irregular logistics dispatches cannot ensure that the drivers can pay the rent, resulting in many drivers being unable to make money. After the contract fails to be fulfilled, the drivers all demand to terminate the contract, but the logistics company uses the driver's violation of the contract as an excuse, refusing to refund or partially refund the deposit. In such cases, the main profit of the logistics company is to obtain the driver's deposit, rather than achieving a win-win situation for both the company and the drivers through logistics dispatch and rental. Clearly, this has constituted the crime of contract fraud.

I. Determination of the Purpose of Illegal Possession

The purpose of illegal possession is the core constitutive element of the crime of contract fraud, and it is also the key to distinguishing criminal fraud from civil fraud. In cases of "rental car scams", the illegal possession purpose of the logistics company can be inferred comprehensively from the following dimensions:

(1) There is no objective guarantee for the performance capability.

In such cases, the logistics company itself does not have sufficient stable partners or regular logistics orders. A small number of orders are received through public logistics platforms. The logistics company deliberately concealed the source of its logistics orders and often exaggerated its transportation capacity during recruitment, claiming to have a large amount of stable supply sources. However, in reality, it has no stable and sufficient logistics business orders. This kind of "fabricated" false promise is essentially knowing that it does not have the ability to fulfill the contract, but still using high salaries as an attraction to lure drivers to sign rental agreements.

On the other hand, whether the logistics company has made adequate preparations and efforts to fulfill its obligations is also a factor in determining the intent of illegal possession. In such cases, it is obvious that the logistics company did not actively expand its logistics business, did not have a large number of business orders in advance, and did not make efforts to expand the business during the process. Instead, it focused its business operations on how to deceive drivers into renting cars and paying guarantees. This clearly shows that the logistics company's ability to fulfill its obligations is seriously lacking in objective guarantees.

(2) Rent and deposit fees have become the main source of income.

Normally, the main source of profit for a logistics company should come from its logistics business, that is, by having drivers complete logistics orders and obtaining the main profits from the clients of the logistics company. If there are not enough logistics orders, then at least no profits should be obtained from the drivers. The logistics company not only does not generate profits from its own logistics business, but instead makes a large amount of profit by charging drivers' rents and deposits, becoming the main source of the company's income. This means that the company's business model has undergone a fundamental change, shifting from legal operation to illegal operation.

On the surface, renting a vehicle involves generating rental fees and signing contracts that stipulate a deposit. These actions seem to be normal operations. However, when considering the commitments made by the drivers and the logistics dispatching, the reason why the drivers agreed to rent the vehicle and pay the deposit was based on the large number of logistics orders promised by the logistics company and the assurance that the drivers could make money after paying the rent. In other words, the reason why the drivers paid the rent and the deposit was due to the false promises of the logistics company. Based on the fabricated facts and concealment of the truth, the logistics company made a decision regarding the rent and deposit in favor of itself. Therefore, when the rent and deposit become the main income of the logistics company, the company's behavior not only meets the objective requirements of contract fraud but also demonstrates its illegal possession intention.

(3) Non-operational use of funds

The deposit and rent paid by the drivers were not used for the expansion of the logistics business; instead, they directly became the main source of the company's profits. In judicial practice, such companies usually adopt the "replacing one part with another" model, using the deposit of new drivers to pay refunds to old drivers, or directly using the funds for shareholder dividends or personal extravagance. When the capital chain breaks, the company often quickly suspends operations or disappears, showing no sincerity in fulfilling its obligations. They even cancel the previous company, re-register a new one, start anew at a different location, and change the business address to make it seem that the previous contract cannot be fulfilled.

II. Distinction between Contract Fraud Crime and Contract Disputes

In the "car rental scam" cases, logistics companies often defend themselves by citing "commercial risks" and "contract disputes", but these two terms have fundamental differences in legal nature:

(1) Different intentions in fulfilling obligations

In contract disputes, both parties have the intention to fulfill the contract. The failure to fulfill the contract is usually caused by objective factors such as market changes and poor management. However, in the case of contract fraud, the logistics company never intended to fulfill the contract in the first place. The signing of the contract was merely a means to defraud money. For instance, a normal rental company would allocate vehicles reasonably based on business volume, while the fraud company would recruit drivers without any limit and even encourage drivers to take out loans to purchase vehicles, completely disregarding the actual transportation capacity requirements. The logistics company fabricated the dispatching capability to deceive the drivers into renting vehicles from the company and paying performance guarantees, and then defrauded the drivers of their rental fees and guarantees after they failed to fulfill the contract. This constitutes the crime of contract fraud. The existence of the illegal possession motive should be judged from aspects such as the company's performance capability, the main sources of the company's profits, and the specific uses of the guarantees. The crime of contract fraud should be distinguished from contract disputes based on aspects such as the willingness to fulfill the contract, the degree of fraud, and the performance behavior. The participants of the logistics company should be classified as the main managers, sales personnel, or non-sales personnel. Among them, the main managers are the principal offenders, while the sales personnel are generally regarded as accomplices. For non-sales personnel, there is theoretically room for non-criminal handling, and at least further lenient punishment should be imposed on them based on the basis of being an accomplice.

I. Determination of the Purpose of Illegal Possession

(1) There is no objective guarantee for the performance capability.

(2) Rent and deposit fees have become the main source of income.

(3) Non-operational use of funds

II. Distinction between Contract Fraud Crime and Contract Disputes

(2) Different degrees of fraudulence

In contract disputes, there may be some exaggeration of the facts, but usually it does not involve the fabrication of core facts. However, in the crime of contract fraud, the fraudulent behavior of the logistics company is systematic, including fabricating the company's qualifications, forging logistics documents, and exaggerating the profit prospects, etc. For example, some companies will promise drivers with false freight volume and income expectations, making drivers mistakenly believe that the company is powerful, thus falling into a trap.

(3) Different performance behaviors

In contract disputes, the parties will actively take remedial measures, such as negotiating to postpone payment or adjusting the contract terms. However, in the case of contract fraud, the logistics company stops fulfilling its delivery obligations after collecting the fees, and even deliberately reduces the number of deliveries, forcing the drivers to voluntarily terminate the contract in order to embezzle the deposit. For example, in a certain case, the company promised to provide at least 20 transportation tasks per month, but in reality, it only dispatched 2-3 tasks per month, and the freight was much lower than the market price.

III. Differential Treatment for Each Participant in the Logistics Company

Cases involving "rental car scams" usually involve multiple participants, including company shareholders and actual operators, salespeople, financial personnel, logistics dispatchers, administrative staff, etc. They should be dealt with based on their roles in the crime. For the main managers of the company, such as the actual controllers and shareholders, they are usually the planners and organizers of the crime and should bear all the criminal facts. These principal offenders not only determine the design of the fraud model but also directly participate in the distribution and disposal of funds. They should be given priority crackdown. This does not need to be elaborated further. However, for the secondary offenders, mainly including salespeople and non-salespeople. Among them, salespeople are an important part of the contract fraud behavior and are the direct implementers of the principal offender's fraud will, playing an irreplaceable role. Although they are classified as secondary offenders, they generally should also be subject to criminal punishment. And for the non-salespeople among them, their subjective understanding and objective participation are significantly different from those of salespeople, and their role is far less than that of salespeople. There is a space for relative non-prosecution or lenient treatment.

Objectively

The work content carried out by non-sales personnel is legal and compliant. If no deceptive behavior was committed towards the drivers and there is no sufficient evidence to prove that they have a clear understanding of the fraud pattern, they can be dealt with as not guilty.

From the perspective of behavioral manifestations, the positions of non-sales personnel are determined to only involve the back-end aspects, such as warehouse management and logistics dispatching, which are part of the compliant business operations. They do not participate in the activities of the front-end sales team in recruiting and deceiving drivers. For instance, if a logistics dispatcher adheres to the principle of being honest and realistic during their interaction with drivers and does not deceive them, they do not have the intent of contract fraud.

From the perspective of cause and effect, the driver's erroneous understanding as the victim was not caused by the contact with non-sales personnel, but rather by the false promises made by the front-line sales personnel. All the driver's solicitation activities were mainly handled by the sales personnel, and the specific sales process did not involve non-sales personnel. Therefore, the driver's erroneous understanding has no causal relationship with the behavior of the non-sales personnel in terms of criminal law.

2. Subjectively

If non-sales personnel are aware of the actual business situation and fraud patterns of the company, but in terms of the element of will, if they hold a negative attitude towards the fraud outcome, neither direct intent nor indirect intent exists, and there is still room for non-criminal treatment.

From the perspective of the will factor, if the non-sales personnel and the driver communicated truthfully, it was not because they intended to deceive the driver together with the company, but they held a clear negative attitude towards the fraudulent outcome, that is, it was not a case of active pursuit or abandonment.

From the perspective of criminal motive and criminal purpose, the absence of the motive for profit can negate the existence of the intentional act of contract fraud. The wages received by non-sales personnel are the legitimate labor remuneration obtained through their legal work, and there is no additional profit, nor did they share the money from the fraud proceeds of the company. In this case, the non-sales personnel earned legitimate labor remuneration through their actual business and naturally had no need to participate in the fraudulent operation part of the company. Therefore, the non-sales personnel had no motive or purpose for illegal profit in their subjective mind, and naturally did not have the criminal motive or criminal purpose for contract fraud, which does not meet the constitutive requirements of the crime of contract fraud.

3. Take a step back

Even if it is determined that non-sales personnel were aware that the front-line sales personnel were deceiving the drivers, since the non-sales personnel's actions in the company's legal logistics business section have the attribute of neutral assistance behavior, they constitute neutral assistance behavior, and the neutrality is greater than the helpfulness. Therefore, the overall evaluation of the behavior is that it does not constitute an accomplice in the crime of contract fraud.

Firstly, the actions carried out by non-sales personnel are part of the legal operations of the logistics company and do not pose any harm to the legal rights of the victims. On the contrary, they are beneficial to the interests of the victims. For instance, the warehousing and logistics business carried out by non-sales personnel objectively provided assistance to the fraudulent acts of the principal and others. However, this action is merely a minor part within the routine job positions of the company and is completely legal and compliant in the entire company's operations. Regarding the direct infringement on drivers, the front-line sales personnel and the bosses are the core personnel in the entire fraud scheme, and the actions they carried out are the objects of criminal law evaluation. However, as a non-sales personnel engaged in warehousing and logistics business, the actions they took were not harmful but beneficial to the drivers. Therefore, this objective assistance attribute does not have any harm to legal rights and should not be included in the content of criminal law evaluation.

Second, the legality of the job content negates the evaluation of illegality. The job responsibilities of non-sales personnel, such as landlords providing offices for the company, property owners providing warehouses, and other administrative staff who do miscellaneous tasks, have certain professional legitimacy and high substitutability. Their roles in the fraud gang are neutral and have no criminal attributes. Therefore, the legality of the job content constitutes a mitigating circumstance for the evaluation of illegality, meaning that the actions of non-sales personnel do not have criminal illegality.

Thirdly, the behaviors of non-sales personnel mainly exhibit neutral attributes and do not possess criminal illegality. For instance, warehouse logistics dispatchers have highly substitutable and neutral job responsibilities. The "helping attribute" serves as the objective basis for imposing criminal penalties; the neutral attribute serves as the objective basis for a negative evaluation. Especially when the neutral attribute of a behavior outweighs the helping attribute, it should not be evaluated as a criminal offense.

Indeed, for neutral assistance behaviors provided by non-sales personnel, if it is considered that their assisting nature far outweighs their neutral nature, then they can be regarded as accomplices in the crime of contract fraud. However, in terms of sentencing, they should receive further lenient punishment based on the principle of being an accessory.