Details revealed on extortion through fake official websites

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Chinese police have captured 16 suspects for allegedly gaining millions of yuan as "hush money" by threatening to expose negative articles enterprises through fraudulent government-sponsored websites.

According to a statement released Saturday by the Ministry of Public Security, these suspects branded themselves as Party and government officials or journalists, and their extortion activities left traces in 27 cities and counties in seven provinces.

As the leader of one blackmail group, 45-year-old Zhong Wei registered two shell companies respectively in 2010 and 2012, which in turn set up six news websites which Zhong claimed to be "government-run" and focus on social issues.

"I just wanted to make some money through reporting stories with negative issues and attracting online visitors," Zhong Wei was quoted as saying by the police, adding that he disguised himself as a Party disciplinary official with the help of fake business cards and documents.

Zhong allegedly intimidated his blackmail targets by claiming that stories with negative influence, once posted on his "government-run" websites, would soon alarm Party and government supervision departments if they didn't pay hush money.

According to the police, Zhong's blackmail attempts were exceptionally successful thanks to the involvement of Dou Yugang, a local government publicity official in east China's Jiangsu Province.

Based on local company violations uncovered during work, Dou allegedly offered Zhong tips and guided him to blackmail related companies. He would then play the role of a mediator to negotiate with Zhong on behalf of the targeted companies and gained kickbacks when the money was received.

According to the police, while many blackmail target groups were indeed guilty of misconduct, others, despite knowing perfectly clear that the news stories were false, also succumbed to the blackmailers' requests, fearing that even unfounded stories were enough to blemish their images after being furiously spread on the Internet.

"We've been working so hard to establish a good image of our enterprise, so we'd rather spend money on 'peace' even though their stories were purely fabricated," a manager surnamed Wei of a real estate company, also one of Zhong's victims, told Xinhua.

According to the police, members of Zhong's group followed detailed divisions of work: in addition to Zhong as the main organizer and Dou as tips providers, a middle school teacher surnamed Ruan served as editor and story writer and a software engineer surnamed Huang managed posts on the websites.

Zhong's was one of four similar groups uncovered that also interacted with each other in blackmail activities, and the 120-plus cases committed by them involved some 3 million yuan (490,000 U.S. dollars), said the statement.

The police said a total of 11 fake government-run websites set up by these suspects had been shut down and further investigations are still underway.

Experts said these crimes exposed loopholes in China's Internet supervision, calling for Internet-related legislation and harsher punishment on violators.

"Shutdown (of websites) is not the end, and more management methods should be explored to ensure regular, systematic and lawful supervision of websites," said Chen Weidong, a professor with the law school of the Renmin University of China.

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