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SCMP Reporter

A BLACKMAILER is to be sentenced today after being found guilty of using nude photographs of a wealthy businessman's wife in a bid to obtain $2 million.

  Ma Yuan, 24, has been convicted of three charges of blackmail. He was cleared of kidnapping the woman.

  The victim, who cannot be named, claimed she had been snatched by a gang of men and bundled into the back of a van.

   She was then stripped and Ma took photographs of her naked, the prosecution told the High Court.

   But Ma, in his defence, said the woman had once been his lover and had consented to him taking the pictures when she was changing out of her swimming costume after a trip to the beach at Shek O.

   He denied blackmailing her and claimed her husband had paid him $500,000 in return for the pictures and on condition that he leave the couple alone.

   Prosecutor Michael Arthur told the jury Ma threatened to send copies of the pictures to the couple's neighbours and to the woman's father-in-law. Ma had also said he would plaster them on walls.

  The couple gave Ma $500,000 and did not initially go to the police because of the 26-year-old woman's embarrassment.

  After the money was paid, the photographs were handed to the husband, and wife who destroyed them.

  But, a year later, the woman started receiving strange telephone calls. The caller told her he also had a videotape of her. Two days later she received a seminude Polaroid snap in an envelope.

  Mr Arthur said Ma had threatened to release the tape and two more photographs unless $1.5 million was handed over. The sum was later reduced to $300,000.

  Telephone calls made by Ma were traced by the police and he was arrested. He will be sentenced by Mr Justice Stuart-Moore.



Man to be sentenced over nude photo plot