Hong Kong prostitution and porn website closed down by police
Nude pictures - including of children - and compensated dating lured 90,000 members
Police have closed a website that offered its 90,000 members nude photographs, including of underage girls, and connected them to women involved in so-called compensated dating.
Set up by a vice gang in 2011, the website brought in more than HK$1.2 million a year, one police investigator said.
Over the past two days, officers arrested its alleged ringleader, his girlfriend and five other people and seized a computer server allegedly used to store pornographic photos, along with the details of 50 women involved in compensated dating - a disguised form of prostitution.
The alleged mastermind, 31, is understood to work full-time as an IT technician.
Chief Inspector Cheng Dien-kit, of Kowloon West regional crime unit, said police froze HK$1.7 million, believed to be the proceeds of crime, in two bank accounts linked to the syndicate.
Investigations began in July last year as the website grew in popularity; it claimed to have 90,000 members.
Membership was free, but members could purchase tokens to download pornographic images of women, including underage girls. Officers are investigating the source of the pictures.
"They were also lured into paying HK$550 as an annual membership fee. In return, they would be given access to the details of women involved in compensated dating on the website," Cheng said. "Those who paid HK$8,000 as a permanent membership fee could view the photographs and have the contact numbers of the women via the site so that they could call the women directly."
The women involved in compensated dating were said to be in their 20s and charged more than HK$1,000 for sex.
Cheng believed thousands of people paid for membership.
This week's raids on more than 10 locations across the city followed months of investigations by Kowloon West officers.
Separately, police arrested two men and one woman on suspicion of luring young women for vice activities through smartphone apps in the name of compensated dating. An undercover policewoman is understood to have helped uncover the case.
The suspects in both cases were arrested on suspicion of living off the earnings of prostitution, soliciting for immoral purposes, money laundering and publishing indecent articles. They will be released on bail pending further investigation.
