Police bust platform for sex shows

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Police from China and Cambodia have busted a major online pornographic performance platform and detained 162 suspects from China and Cambodia, the Ministry of Public Security said on Thursday.


It is thought to be the biggest live pornographic platform to be smashed by Chinese police, the ministry said.


According to the ministry, police captured the 18 main suspects in Cambodia and brought them back to China to face trial. They detained the other 144 accused of spreading obscene articles from 20 provinces and regions nationwide.


The police also seized 240 phones and computers used as tools in the crimes, along with 1.5 TB of electronic data. The amount of money involved reached 250 million yuan ($36.4 million).


"Disseminating pornographic materials has seriously degraded the healthy network environment and brought great harm to people's physical and mental health, and we will strenuously fight such crimes," a statement from the ministry said on Thursday.


The investigation dates to March, when police from Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, discovered that some people were promoting a cellphone app called Max through WeChat, forums and QQ groups. When a purchase was made, the buyer would become a member and receive passwords.


The passwords granted access to a live platform, on which women and men performed sex acts in revealing dress. Such shows were then broadcast by 117 branch platforms under the main one.


Investigators found that the main computer server of the network was located abroad. The principals, including the boss, managers and technicians, rented servers in Hong Kong, and logged into them from Cambodia, the police said.


The ministry said general agents were hired on the Chinese mainland who purchased password cards at 4 yuan each. The general agents then developed various levels of other agents nationwide and sold them the password cards at 10 to 20 yuan each; those secondary agents then attracted several million memberships and sold customers password cards for as much as 100 yuan each.


Before the police smashed the operation, 3.5 million people had purchased the password cards and logged in to the platform to view the pornographic videos. The amount of money involved reached 250 million yuan.


The police found that the agents were involved in 20 provinces and regions. An investigative team was set up under the leadership of the Ministry of Public Security.


In May, three Chinese police officers went to Cambodia to investigate further. With the assistance of Cambodian police, they located the 18 Chinese suspects in a villa near a port.


In August, more than 30 Cambodian police surrounded the villa and launched a raid, capturing the main 18 Chinese suspects, who were working on their computers. Many criminal tools were confiscated at the scene, the authorities said.


Moreover, 300 officers from Zhejiang in several action groups captured 200 gang members from 20 Chinese provinces and regions, criminally detaining 144 of them.


The ministry said it will actively investigate, and would urge the public to report clues so as to intensify the crackdown on such crimes to purify the network environment.

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