Li Wenxing was found dead in a puddle in Jinghai District, north China's Tianjin Municipality on July 14. The young man is believed to have been lured by a pyramid scheme which posed as an IT company on a recruitment platform.
When Li's story emerged, so did such questions as if he was murdered or a desperate Li took his own life.
Mystery is still shrouding the young man's death as investigation into the case seeks answers to a host of questions, including the reliability of online job markets, which are considered as a crucial lifeline for talented yet unemployed youth.
A glimpse of hope after successive failures
Li majored resource exploration engineering at the Northeastern University, but it came out that he never liked his major.
Hoping to find his career path in China's booming IT industry, he signed up for coding courses in Beijing last July, with the tuition fees estimated at 16,000 yuan (2,380 US dollars), a big burden on his family in the rural outskirts of the city of Dezhou, in eastern Shandong Province.
"Since March, Li started looking for a new job through a phone application called Boss Hiring (Zhipin.com)," Hu Ze, Li's roommate told the Beijing News. "He managed to secure interviews at 10 different occasions, but was not hired" by any of the companies, he said.
But the string of misfortunate events was about to take a turn for the better, or so Li thought.
On May 15, a person who identified himself as Xue Tingting contacted Li through the online platform, asking if he would like to join a project in Tianjin run by a company called Kelan.
"The project will last for two months," Xue told Li. "You will be sent back to our headquarters in Beijing afterwards."
An interview call took place on May 18. The next day, Li received an employment acceptance email from Kelan Company.
Li set off to Tianjin two days later.
On the afternoon of May 20, he texted his roommate Hu, telling him he is safe and sound in Jinghai District in Tianjing. However, Li's sister received two messages from him on the same day, in which he informed her he is in Binhai District.
"He was then out of reach for five days. He asked me if I could lend him 500 yuan (74 US dollars)," Hu told the Beijing News.
"Without any friendly greetings, he asked for another 500 yuan on June 8."
Li's high school classmate Wang Sheng also told Tianjin police that Li borrowed money from him -- on June 8, as well.
"He told me he had left Tianjin and he was now employed in Shijiazhuang (in northern Hebei Province) as he had relatives there," Wang said.
Li's family denied later on having any close relatives in Shijiazhuang.
"I wanted to visit him in Tianjin, but he told me he is traveling between Tianjin and Shijiazhuang, so I nixed the plan," Li Wenyue, Li's younger sister, told the Beijing News.
"We did sense he was being weird."
