Economic Observer Online
November 29, 2010
Translated by Zhang Chao
Original article: [Chinese]

On November 28, Chongqing police announced that they had cracked a case involving the attempted blackmailing of local schools, hospitals and government departments by a group of individuals posing as journalists.

According to police in Chongqing's Zhong County, since 2009, the criminal gang led by Deng Dazhong had defrauded over 140,000 yuan by posing as journalists and claiming to have the authority to remove negative news stories that had already been published online.

The gang posed as journalist from a variety of media outlets including Legal News Web (法訊網(wǎng)), China Legal News Online (中國(guó)法治新聞網(wǎng)), Xinjiang's New Post (新早報(bào)) and others.

Some of the news outlets which Deng Dazhong claimed to work for have moved quickly to distance themselves from him, with Xinjiang's New Post releasing a statement saying that Deng had never worked for the paper and had nothing to do with them.

According to the original complaint received by the Zhong County Public Security Bureau in late October, the group had already received payments of 10,000 yuan from officials at the county body in charge of parks and gardens and a similar amount from a county hospital. Among other cases, a local construction company had also paid 50,000 yuan to the fake journalists and a party secretary surnamed Zhang of one unnamed village had also paid 31,000 yuan to have damaging content removed from a website.

Deng Dazhong was first detained on Nov 17. Over the following days police rounded up and detained most of his accomplices, though some remain at large.

A person familiar with this situation revealed to the EO that Deng Dazhong kept various fake press cards and use to prey on various local government departments, schools and hospitals by collecting "hush money" to delete or not report news that would be perceived as critical of the institution involved.

This article was edited by Paul Pennay