Incredibly, this is true! Slate.com originally broke the story of how the super rich in China get away with pretty much everything, including murder. According to Slate, a wealthy 20-year-old named Hu was drag racing his friends, when he struck and killed a pedestrian. Although Hu received a three-year prison sentence, allegations arose that the man appearing in court and serving the three-year sentence wasn’t Hu at all, but a hired body double!
Image Source: post-gazette.com
In China, the practice is so common that there is even a term for it: ding zui or ti-shen, meaning “substitute criminal.” A substitute criminal can be hired for as little as $31 per day of jail time served.
The Chinese government even banned the term ti-shen from the country’s search engines and social media outlets in August 2012 when Bo Xilai, a former rising star of China’s Communist Party, was convicted and sentenced.
Bo Xilai’s wife, Gu Kalai, was also charged with the murder of British citizen Neil Heywood and given a “suspended death sentence” in one of modern China’s most sensational public scandals. Accusations arose that Gu Kalai had also hired a “body double.” Here’s a photo of the real Gu Kalai on the right and her alleged body double on the left:
Image Source: slate.com
Look at Gu’s eyes and nose on the right and on the left — do you think they belong to the same person? Or is it simply the effects of weight gain, aging, and bad prison haircuts?
The concept of body doubles or substitute criminals goes way back in Chinese history. Missionary and traveler Karl Gützlaff wrote about the practice as early as 1834. In 1899, a scholar of Chinese criminal law wrote that, notwithstanding imperial decrees outlawing the practice, courts “permitted” the real offenders to hire substitutes. 19th century observers even wrote about body doubles who were hired to be executed.
China’s “1 percent” controls more than half of its wealth and the second-largest concentration of billionaires in the world. At the same time, 13 percent of the population in China lives on less than the equivalent of $1.25 a day, which creates both a pool of willing “body doubles” and enormous resentment.
Image Source: chinesetouristagency.com
In the age of digital photos and the Internet, it is increasingly difficult even for the wealthy and powerful in China to pull off this trick. Despite pervasive government censorship in China, many Chinese citizens are outraged at the practice and scrutinize videos, documents and photos to uncover suspected body doubles.
What do you think? How much would someone have to pay you to serve time? Should wealthy convicted criminals in China be forced to forfeit a large percentage of their assets in order to truly punish them, in addition to imprisonment? Do the wealthy in America also get away with crimes?
Could You Legally Hire Someone to Serve Your Prison Sentence in California?
Curious readers often wonder: is it legal to hire a body double to serve your California prison sentence like wealthy defendants allegedly do in China? Under California Penal Code Section 182(a)(5), conspiring “to pervert or obstruct justice, or the due administration of the laws” constitutes criminal conspiracy, a felony offense punishable by up to one year in county jail or state prison depending on severity. Hiring someone to impersonate you and serve your sentence would trigger multiple felony charges including conspiracy to obstruct justice and criminal impersonation.
California courts treat such schemes as direct attacks on judicial integrity. Both the original convicted defendant and the body double face separate criminal prosecution—the defendant receives additional felony charges stacked atop the original sentence, while the body double faces conspiracy charges carrying penalties equivalent to the underlying crime they agreed to fraudulently serve. California Penal Code Section 182 operates on “same manner and same extent” sentencing, meaning conspiracy to obstruct a three-year prison sentence creates three additional years of criminal exposure.
The practical reality: California’s criminal justice system employs biometric identification, DNA databases, and digital fingerprinting making body double schemes virtually impossible to execute. Any attempt would trigger federal charges under 18 U.S.C. 1521 for obstruction of justice, potentially adding decades to sentences rather than avoiding imprisonment.
