A real estate agent has been sentenced to six months of probation for forging official documents to help his clients close an illicit apartment sale, Pudong New Area People's Court said Tuesday.

The defendant, surnamed Shen, was hired in 2012 by an apartment owner, surnamed Zheng, and a prospective buyer, surnamed Zhu, to help them circumvent the rules governing the sale of relocation apartments.

Zhu met Zheng in 2012 while she was looking for another apartment to buy in her residential compound. The two came to an agreement, but could not close the deal because Zheng received the apartment from the government as relocation compensation. Under the city's housing regulations, homeowners must wait at least three years before they can sell relocation apartments.

Shen asked Zheng and Zhu to pay him a 10,000 yuan ($1,633) commission, plus 67,000 yuan to build up the right connections to solve the problem. To get around the regulations, Shen planned to make it look on paper as if Zheng and Zhu were divorced so that Zheng could transfer ownership of the property to Zhu as part of a divorce settlement.

Shen first went to a local real estate trading center in April 2013 to remove Zheng's wife's name from the deed. He then found someone to forge a court civil mediation document that showed Zheng was willing to give Zhu the apartment as part of their "divorce."

The document wasn't good enough to fool the real estate trading center's staff members, who spotted it as a fake.

Shen faced a maximum sentence of three years in prison, but the court said it gave him a lenient sentence because he confessed.

Global Times