text: A screenshot from a local TV program from Hunan province shows the swindler Yuan. 
   
   Swindler had 17 girlfriends, taken to court 
   
   A playboy who had relations with 17 women was exposed after all his "girlfriends" finally met with each other, uncovering the man's schemes, the Hunan-based Xiaoxiang Morning Herald reported on Thursday. 
   
   The man, surnamed Yuan, received visits and greetings from more than a dozen women between the ages of 20 to 40-years-old, all of which claimed to be his wives or girlfriends, after he was hospitalized due to injuries in a car accident. 
   
   All the lovers didn't realize the man's deception until they met in his ward and told each other about their identities and "love stories" with Yuan through WeChat. Some have even stayed with him for 10 years. 
   
   Yuan, a nobody bearing simply a middle school diploma, from Changsha county, Changsha city of Hunan province, fabricated his education background as a university graduate majoring in civil engineering from Central South University, a top university in the central China province. He worked in a big company in charge of revamping expressways. 
   
   He had swindled tens of thousands yuan from his 17 girlfriends after he divorced his ex-wife and cheated her of 250,000 yuan. His case will be charged as a criminal case for alleged fraud. 
   
   That's it for this installment of trending, come back for more interesting stories from the Chinese internet. ||||| A young Romeo who dated at least 17 Juliets at once - including fathering a child with one of them - got his comeuppance after a car accident when doctors contacted his "relatives" - and all his girlfriends turned up at the same time. 
   
   The man from Changsha, in Hunan province, identified only by his surname, Yuan was taken to hospital on March 24 with injuries not believed to be life threatening. 
   
   His girlfriends - and hospital staff - were stunned to discover the truth when they arrived en masse to find they were going out with the same man, Changsha newspaper Xiaoxiang Chen Bao reported on Friday. 
   
   One of the girlfriends, who called herself Xiao Li, said: "I've been with him for a year and a half. [After hearing he'd been in an accident] I cried so hard I didn't have any tears left. 
   
   "I was really worried when I heard that he was in hospital. But when I started seeing more and more beautiful girls show up, I couldn't cry any more." 
   
   Xiao said she had set up an online chat group made up of 17 of Yuan's partners. She said she had learned that some of Yuan's other girlfriends had given him money each month - sometimes large sums - with one woman providing him with financial support for nine years. 
   
   Wang Fang, another of Yuan's partners, said: "We've already had a son together. What can I do now? I don't love him any more, but I do love my son." 
   
   Another girlfriend, who gave her name as Xiao Ting, said she had believed that Yuan was her "Mr Right", and she had already started to plan their wedding. 
   
   More than 6,000 comments have been posted on social media. Some expressed admiration for the man, while others said the women should have been smarter and discovered his deceit. 
   
   A commentator from Jiangsu province wrote: "A liar always acts perfectly. The only thing he paid them were compliments, which are all that women wanting a perfect life will need. So as a consequence, they were cheated on."
target: – Sometimes all it takes for a wounded man to heal is a little TLC—or a lot of TLC, if all 17 of your girlfriends show up. A Chinese man identified only by the surname Yuan was in a car accident on March 24 and was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, per local media. But when staff started contacting his loved ones, more people than anyone expected showed up at his bedside. Yuan had apparently been dating at least 17 women at the same time—including one who says she has a son with him, the South China Morning Post reports—with no one aware of the others' existence until his accident. "I was really worried when I heard that he was in hospital," one paramour says, per the Morning Post. "But when I started seeing more and more beautiful girls show up, I couldn't cry any more." Another deceived lover reveals she had been planning a wedding with him, while the one who claims to have a child by him laments, "What can I do now? I don't love him any more, but I do love my son." Yuan, who was reportedly with some of these women as long as 10 years, is also accused of stealing more than $40,000 from his ex-wife and conning at least some of these 17 girlfriends out of their own funds, China Daily reports; the paper says he'll be charged with fraud. This isn't the only scam Yuan is said to have pulled: Even though it seems he only graduated from middle school, he reportedly worked for a company that rebuilt highways after claiming that he had a civil engineering degree, China Daily notes. (Romance scams can be big business.)