China busts largest Web prostitution racket

BEIJING: Beijing police have unearthed one of the largest and sophisticated online prostitution rackets in the country this week and detained 151 people, including a 15-year-old girl.

Among the others were 63 organisers, 38 suspected prostitutes and 45 clients, Zhang Xiaoguang, a police official said. Police began gathering detailed information on online prostitution rings through some websites, chat service, private blogs and chatrooms in December, he said.

After further investigation, they found that all the information had come from one gang stationed in the Xiluoyuan area of southern Beijing’s Fengtai District and the posters were sent out from a nearby Internet cafe.

About 30 non-Beijingers, all of them men, were employed from 8 am to 10 pm every day to tap clients through the cyber cafes.

The gang attracted clients for the prostitutes by randomly sending countless messages to Internet users who were logged on to major chat rooms, forums, or through instant messages.

Police say the gang sent more than seven million messages to Internet users in the past month alone. Many messages purported to be from available young, female college students.

Other messages directed people to blogs that contained nude pictures of women. In all the messages phone numbers were left where clients could make contact with a prostitute.