"This is one more case of organized cheating, hardly uncommon in China these days, that leave ordinary people at a distinct disadvantage," said Zhou Xiaozheng, a professor of sociology at People's University in Beijing.
Some analysts add that since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, which put an end to political reform, an obsession with money has supplanted a sense of solidarity and idealism.
Before his fall from grace, Yilishen Chief Executive Wang Fengyou, 45, was something of a folk hero. Born poor, he sold potatoes and made bean curd to support his family before moving on to bottling, a slaughterhouse and a taxi business. He founded Yilishen in 1999 and started recruiting ant farmers two years later.
The New China News Agency, the People's Daily and the CCTV broadcasting network ran glowing reports on Wang's business acumen. In 2006 he received the government's prestigious "model entrepreneur" award.
The company hired as its spokesman Zhao Benshan, a famous comedian and actor who specializes in playing a hick. He has since dropped out of sight.
The boxes at the heart of the ant farming business are made of cardboard with a 2-inch-square plastic window and a small feeding hole framed so badly with duct tape that they look like the work of a careless teenager with a box cutter.
In return for their money, ant farmers were given the boxes, ants and a list of strict instructions: The ants need a spritz of water mixed with white sugar or honey at 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. every day. They should be fed cake and egg yolks every three to five days. And they should be kept indoors.
In return, the company would come and pick up dead dried ants every 74 days. Under no circumstances were the ant farmers to open their boxes and look inside, they were told, to ensure that the special Yilishen ants weren't mixed with inferior ants.
So far, few details have emerged to illustrate how Yilishen stayed in business so long, or how much Wang profited personally. Most such schemes implode within a year or so.
But an unidentified former manager wrote on the website www.globalvoicesonline.org that "the media keeping the ball rolling along with ignorant people thinking a pie had just fallen from the sky."
In retrospect, there were warning signs. In November 2004, when the company attempted to export its health products, the Food and Drug Administration barred them from the United States, ruling that they contained prescription-strength sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra. This apparently killed Yilishen's plans to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
