Six men in China have been sentenced to prison for attempted murder after they all tried to pass on a hit job they were reluctant to carry out in person.

Real estate businessman Qin Youhui began the saga in 2013 when he hired a contract killer to take out a rival, Mr Wei, who was suing him.

But that hit man instead pocketed half of the two million yuan (£218,000) Mr Qin paid out and passed the gig to another person.

The assassination was then contracted out an additional three times until a fifth man entered the picture, Ling Xiansi. By then, it was April 2014, and the original pot of job money had dwindled – he was offered just 100,000 yuan (£10,900) to carry out the killing.

Mr Ling decided it simply wasn’t enough.