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11 arrested as WeChat prostitution ring busted

Shanghai Daily, October 22, 2013

• A prostitution ring that used the WeChat mobile phone app to find clients has been busted and 11 people arrested, local prosecutors announced yesterday.

  Prosecutors say the gang made use of WeChat’s location-based plug-in “People Nearby,” which lets users of the text and voice messaging communication service contact other WeChat users nearby.

  In mid June, Baoshan District police found 10 WeChat accounts using pornographic images as their portraits and including prices for sexual services and contact information in their introductions. Eight were located in the same place.

  Police contacted them and found it was a prostitution ring as most details provided were identical.

  After locating the ring members, police held 11 people in Baoshan and Minhang districts.

  The alleged ring leader, surnamed Zhao, said he started to organize online prostitution services at the beginning of this year.

  He had four people to attract customers online and gave them 100 yuan (US$16.50) for each customer. The others worked as telephone operators for 3,000 yuan a month.

  Meanwhile, a gang of five who allegedly gang-raped a 15-year-old girl they met through WeChat were charged with rape, Fengxian District People’s Procuratorate said yesterday.

  The girl befriended a 19-year-old migrant worker, surnamed Cheng, and was invited out for dinner on July 23.

  Cheng and his friends urged her to drink several bottles of beer and then took the girl to a hotel room where she was gang-raped, it is claimed.

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