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. He had swindled tens of thousands yuan from his 17 girlfriends after he divorced his ex-wife and cheated her of 250,000 yuan.
– 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.)