Xu Yao has been sentenced to death in China.
A former executive at a prominent gaming company has been sentenced to death for the murder of the founder, Lin Qi, in 2020. Xu Yao was convicted of poisoning Mr Qi’s food in December 2020 following a professional dispute. The Shanghai First Intermediate People’s Court handed down the sentence.
Lin Qi, the founder of Yoozoo Games, a gaming company with significant ties to Game of Thrones and the Netflix series The Three-Body Problem, had secured a lucrative deal with Netflix. However, tensions arose when an executive named Xu Yao who was heading Yoozoo’s subsidiary “Three-Body Universe”, discovered that his name was omitted from the Netflix deal announcement, despite Mr Qi being credited as the executive producer, the Sun reported.
This then led the disgruntled former TV executive to begin plotting Mr Qi’s death. Drawing inspiration from the TV series Breaking Bad, Mr Yao set up a laboratory in Shanghai, where he experimented with over 100 toxins obtained from the dark web, testing them on small, defenseless animals.
Despite initial speculation that Lin Qi was poisoned through cups of Chinese tea, it was later revealed that Xu Yao had laced a bottle of probiotic tablets with poisonous pills, which were taken by Mr Qi and several colleagues.
Mr Qi fell ill shortly after and was hospitalised on December 16, 2020, showing symptoms of mercury poisoning. Later, he succumbed to a neurotoxin found in puffer fish and died 10 days later on Christmas Day, despite extensive medical efforts.
Xu Yao has been sentenced to death in China after being found guilty of poisoning Lin Qi and four others.
Yoozoo Games created Game of Thrones: Winter Is Coming, a game inspired by the acclaimed TV series. In 2000, Mr Qi was ranked 870 among China’s richest entrepreneurs, boasting a net worth of 6.8 billion yuan ($1 billion), as reported by the BBC.