Media boss gets 4 years for online rumors
Print Edition
THE boss of a media company that spread lurid tales online in a bid to raise the profile of its clients was yesterday sentenced to 4 years in prison and fined 150,000 yuan (US$24,500).
Yang Xiuyu, the boss of Internet marketing firm Beijing Erma, was convicted at Beijing Chaoyang District People’s Court of illegal business operations that generated more than 750,000 yuan in revenue between 2008 and 2013.
Under his instruction, Erma employees posted false information online and also deleted material considered detrimental to the company’s clients, the court said.
Among the crimes cited by prosecutors was the production in October 2011 of a “vulgar” video to promote a 52-year-old painter surnamed An.
The film, which went viral on the Internet, showed An — dressed as a Buddhist monk — cavorting and apparently having sex with two women on a boat, the court said.
Yang was also found to have used a microblog account on the Twitter-like Sina Weibo to write that a model and her “sugar daddy” had spent 8.88 million yuan chartering a jet to go to London for the 2012 Olympics.
Public outrage ensued before it was revealed to have been a publicity stunt for a travel agency client.
Yang was detained in August last year along with Erma’s account manager, 31-year-old Lu Mei. The pair stood trial on August 14 this year.
Lu was sentenced to 18 months in prison and fined 30,000 yuan.
In April, one of Yang’s former employees, Qin Zhihui, became the first person in the country to be found guilty under the government’s new laws on spreading rumors online.
He was sentenced to 3 years in prison after starting and circulating rumors about celebrities, government figures and major events, including a 2011 bullet train accident and China’s most famous Good Samaritan, Lei Feng.
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