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6 arrested for blackmailing businesses

Writer: Zhang Qian  | Editor: Lily A  | From:  | Updated: 2018-08-13

A gang of six was recently arrested for allegedly blackmailing restaurants and shops, the Shenzhen Evening News reported yesterday, citing the Luohu People’s Procuratorate.

The gang members are alleged professional criminals who would blackmail restaurants and stores after pretending to solicit their help in purchasing goods through illegal channels. After completing the illegal business transactions, the suspects would threaten to report the business owners to police by using the evidence collected during the trade.

One of the gang’s victims identified as Zhang worked at a restaurant in Luohu District.

In October 2017, one of the suspects pretended to be a customer and asked Zhang to buy him some homemade seahorse liquor produced in Shantou City. One month later, the “customer” paid Zhang with a bank card and collected the seahorse liquor.

The suspect then asked Zhang to buy another 20 bottles of the same liquor. Their dealings involved a total of 17,280 yuan (US$2,524).

The “customer” later sent Zhang a screenshot of their transaction record and ordered the restaurant to pay him 100,000 yuan by threatening to turn over the evidence of the restaurant’s illegal behavior to the market supervision department. Zhang reported the case to the Luohu police in February.

Through the investigation, police found that the suspect had blackmailed the restaurant after deliberately asking Zhang to breach the law for him.

Police also found 10 clues connected to similar blackmail cases. With the clues, police tracked down a gang in Shenzhen that had been blackmailing businesses using the same trick for a long time.

Police said the gang members would ask the victims to purchase large quantities of illegally imported wine, liquor, milk powder, and other goods that had flaws on the labels or logos. They would later report the products to the relevant authority to blackmail the restaurants, stores and supermarkets.

After the gang members received the ransom money from the business owners, they would drop their complaints from the authority by saying they lacked enough evidence to proceed with the reports.

The gang was led by a person surnamed Li and had been filing food reports for many years.

The city’s market and quality supervision commission reminds business operators not to import goods with vague information or through illegal channels so as not to fall into these kinds of traps.