Scorn turns to sympathy after 'Aids girl' blog is exposed as ex-boyfriend's hoax

It had all the makings of a classic tabloid exclusive for the cyber age: vice, vengeance and a horrific virus, all played out on the blogosphere.

That the whole 'Aids girl' furore was a hoax - and the woman at its centre was seemingly the victim of a twisted campaign by her jilted lover - has only fuelled the appetite of the mainland's scandal-hungry internet users even further. They have been lapping up the almost daily revelations about an extramarital affair turned sour.

Police in Hebei confirmed on Friday that they had taken a 33-year-old married Beijing man in for questioning on suspicion of slandering his former girlfriend and her family members.

It is alleged that Yang Yongmeng posted 161 photographs of his former lover online - including nude pictures and videos containing sexual content - and wrote blogs in her name claiming that she had been raped by her stepfather, was HIV-positive and was a prostitute, intent on spreading the virus to her clients. The blogs included 279 mobile-phone numbers said to be the private numbers of sexual clients likely to have contracted HIV.

According to Hebei police, these were actually numbers taken from his former girlfriend's phone and those of her family members. They also included the private numbers of police officers called to intervene in a dispute between Yang and his girlfriend's family, Xinhua reported.

Before mounting the online campaign, Yang distributed hundreds of posters around his former girlfriend's hometown after she broke up with him in August, police allege.