A 59-year-old woman from the central Chinese city of Wuhan transformed her appearance through plastic surgery in order to avoid 25 million yuan ($3.7 million) of personal debts, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
In a case highlighting the challenges facing China as it tries to establish a "credit society," police officers were reported to have been "astonished" after apprehending the woman, who fled to the southeastern Chinese city of Shenzhen after a court in Wuhan ordered her to pay off her debt.
"We were very surprised at the scene," Xinhua quoted a policeman as saying. "She looked in her thirties and was different from the photos we had."