Detectives descended on Shisun and began questioning villagers. What they found were organized gangs devoted to serial killing for cash.

Some participants recruited and killed the victims, having won their cooperation by promising good wages, friendship, even marriage. Others posed as the grieving family members who turned up at the mine to demand compensation, the police have said.

The gangs disguised the identities of their victims, using stolen or bought identity papers that they persuaded or tricked victims into using, ensuring that their real families would not learn of their fate. Most victims were quickly cremated by their fake families, making identification even harder and erasing clues about their deaths.

Discovery is further complicated because the families of marginalized drifters are unlikely to file a missing-person report. Even if they did, they would be unlikely to know when or where the men had last been seen alive — or when simply being out of touch had turned into their being missing or dead.

The other side of the equation that kept the business humming is the mine owners, who paid handsome sums to the impostor families in order to keep the deaths quiet. If a fatal accident were reported, the owners feared, safety regulators would shut down the mine for months while they investigated, several mine owners told the police after the killings came to light.

If these killings sound like the plot of a thriller, that may be no coincidence.

A similar case inspired the 2003 film “Blind Shaft,” a Chinese drama about two men who kill fellow miners for their compensation. In what seems to be an endless loop of life imitating art imitating life, some officials have said that the movie became an instruction manual for the recent killings.

“Some viewers saw the film ‘Blind Shaft’ and found a way to get rich,” the township government that oversees Shisun Village said in a notice posted outside the village committee office. “The culprits showed no compassion at all for life, and in particular kin and friends who were mentally impaired became assets used to make money.”