A former lawyer who worked for the Chinese gaming company Yoozoo Games was sentenced to death on Friday for fatally poisoning its billionaire founder, Lin Qi.
Xu Yao was accused of serving Lin and other colleagues poison following a dispute over business operations, per a report from Deadline. Lin became very ill between September and December 2020 and died from complications on Christmas Day 2020. Xu, described as “disgruntled” by the New York Times, was taken into custody by Chinese police several days later.
Yoozoo Games owns the rights to the massively popular new Netflix series, “3 Body Problem.”
The company gave Netflix the right to produce an adaptation of the sci-fi trilogy in 2020, the outlet noted. “3 Body Problem” is produced by “Game of Thrones” creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. Lin was also named as an executive producer for the project.
BBC News reported that Xu was hired as the company’s chief risk officer in 2017. He initially had a good relationship with Lin and his co-workers. The publication noted that Lin appointed Xu to spearhead a subsidiary called The Three Body Universe one year after his hiring. Both men worked together closely on putting together the Netflix deal.
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Authorities claim that Xu made his plans to poison his enemies when those relationships fractured after Lin put other executives in charge of business operations. He first tested the poison on animals, then moved on to people. An article from The Hollywood Reporter citing local media said that Lin gave Xu and others poisoned tea, while the Deadline report claims the poison was distributed via fake probiotic pills.
In 2020, company reps issued a statement on the passing of its founder on its official Weibo microblog. “Goodbye youth,” it said. “We will be together, continue to be kind, continue to believe in goodness, and continue the fight against all that is bad.”
“3 Body Problem” has become a huge success for Netflix, with 11 million views in its first four days on the streaming platform. It follows an astrophysicist who sees her father beaten to death during a struggle session in the Chinese Cultural Revolution. She is conscripted by the military to help save Earth from an alien invasion.