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    NEWS

    Criminals Doctoring Sex Shots to Blackmail Officials

    Report says 331 victims were targeted, with blackmailers asking for 700 million yuan.

    A rural county in the central province of Hunan has earned itself a badge of dishonor as China’s blackmail capital.

    Shuangfeng County owes the title to some residents’ fondness for editing photos so that government officials appear in sexually compromising positions.

    Sixth Tone’s sister publication The Paper analyzed 70 court cases from the period 2009 to 2016 found on China Judgments Online, a legal case database backed by the Supreme People’s Court. The analysis found criminals attempted to blackmail 331 victims, mostly high-level officials in government or state-owned enterprises, for a total sum of 700 million yuan (about $105 million). Of the 129 defendants, 62 came from Shuangfeng.

    In most cases, the criminals altered photos to make it look like their victims had been photographed while having sex. The blackmailers then demanded money, threatening to release the pictures to the public.

    In the earliest case, back in 2009, a photo studio was used to paste the face of the victim on a lewd picture found on a porn DVD. In later cases photo-editing software had been used.

    Stories of government officials caught having extramarital affairs frequently make the news. In June a Hunan judge was put under investigation after evidence of him booking hotel rooms for on-the-clock rendezvous with several women was posted on social media.

    Li Yingzhi, a lawyer at Beijing-based Yingke Law Firm, told Sixth Tone that such stories mean even innocent government officials “prefer to send money to blackmailers rather than have their reputations ruined.”

    The racket was apparently so widespread in Shuangfeng that the local government started a crackdown in 2013, after it was criticized by the Ministry of Public Security. Now, a red-colored warning marquee floats around the website of the local police encouraging visitors to report Photoshop-savvy blackmailers.

    An official at Shuangfeng County’s public security bureau told The Paper that only one case had been reported so far this year.

    Wang Zhijian, a lawyer at the Fujian Minrong Law Firm, told Sixth Tone the cost of such crimes is low, and it’s usually hard to find evidence. However, with the increased vigilance by the police, “the number of such cases is decreasing each year,” he added.

    One of the victims, the president of a district court in Changsha, the capital of Hunan, told The Paper that he wired the money requested — 520,000 yuan — so it could serve as evidence.

    Not all of the asked-for sums were transmitted. In total 78 of the victims gave in to their blackmailers, handing over 13.2 million yuan. The amounts asked for ranged from 20,000 yuan to 3 million yuan.

    According to one court document, Shuangfeng native Wang Xiang blackmailed 27 high-level party and government officials from all over China in 2012, using computer-generated pornographic images. Only one of his victims gave in to his demands, sending Wang 23,000 yuan in total. Wang was sentenced to five years for extortion.

    In another case, a victim surnamed Wang (no relation to the blackmailer) wired 680,000 yuan after receiving a photo of a man and a woman lying naked in bed. According to court documents, Wang was afraid of the negative public opinion the photo would bring if released, so he opted to “lose money to avoid misfortune.”

    With contributions from Fan Yiying.

    (Header image: Judith Haeusler/The Image Bank/VCG)