Chinese Man Gets 13 Years for Blackmailing Officials Over Porn

CHINA—Last month, we took note of the Chinese government official caught stashing porn under a statue of Buddha. We don't believe he was executed for that crime (at least we hope not!), but his career is certainly in tatters. And last year, we reported on a new trend that involved gangs "giving government officials a little taste of their own medicine by Photoshopping their likenesses onto pornographic photos. Adding injury to insult, the miscreants then blackmail the officials." The trend continues to this day, only the government now seems determined to put an end to it. According to The Telegraph, "A blackmailer from southwest China has been jailed for 13 years for attempting to swindle Communist Party officials out of hundreds of thousands of pounds, using little more than a cheap desktop computer and a collection of pornography." The crime itself was simplicity defined. "Using a Chinese Lenovo computer," the paper reported, "a copy of Photoshop and a selection of X-rated photographs, he transplanted his victims’ faces onto those of real life porn stars. With a few clicks of Mr Zhang’s mouse, unwitting government officials were transformed into copulating protagonists in blush-inducing scenes of sexual depravity. Other victims were pictured gambling, a crime in Mainland China." One would think such a ruse would never work, but incredibly, The Telegraph reports that "two victims paid 200,000 Yuan (£19,560) to hush up orgies in which they had played no part." Zhang was certainly not the first person to engage in this sort of extortion. "China’s fetish for fake sex photographs hit the headlines in 2013 when a small town in central China was unmasked as a hotbed for their production," said the paper. Eventually, however, he was caught when a mayor he was trying to blackmail went to the police rather than pay up for something he had not done. Zhang was reportedly captured last year on Christmas day. It's unclear if his punishment will act as a deterrent to others, but the fake porn problem has been getting so bad that last year officials actually changed banners reading “Long live Chairman Mao”  to ones that read, “Let’s work together to launch a ‘people’s war’ against blackmailers using Photoshop on sex photos!” It's a good guess Mao never saw that one coming. Image: Billboards asking people not to make fake porn and then blackmail officials with it.