A woman accused of cheating millionaires out of more than 360 million yuan ($59 million) with her German boyfriend is being prosecuted in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, cnr.cn reported.

Born to a middle-class family in Shanghai, the woman started her career in a bank before turning to fraud, the authorities said.

As many as eight millionaires fell victim to the woman, surnamed Zheng, and her boyfriend, identified as Robert, who claimed to be an heir of a German family with wealth in the hundreds of millions of euros.