Man suspected of blackmailing male fling with private messages
A local man is pending trial for allegedly blackmailing a man he was having a casual relationship with for 20,000 yuan (US$3,000), using intimate messages from the latter’s mobile phone, police said on Tuesday.
The suspect was also suspected of secretly transferring 60,000 yuan from the latter’s Alipay account to his own without his awareness, police said.
The suspect, a 25-year-old man surnamed Fan, was in a casual relationship with the victim, a 27-year-old man surnamed Xu, after the two got to know each other on the internet.
Xu, who spent two nights with Fan at a hotel in Putuo District on March 20 and 23, said he found afterwards that 30,000 yuan had been transferred from his Alipay account to Fan’s, each time likely when he was asleep in the hotel room.
Xu said he enabled money transfer only with his fingerprint.
When Xu tried to get his money back from Fan, he allegedly demanded another 20,000 yuan with the excuse that he had found out about Xu’s affairs with other men.
Meanwhile, Fan managed to add Xu’s parents on WeChat and started to send private conversations between Xu and other men to them.
Xu said he was in fear that Fan had copied private pictures and videos in which he was seen with other men.
Confronted by his mother who had no idea that her son was gay, Xu had to confess about the trouble he was in and reported it to police on April 14.
When Fan surrendered to the police later in the month, he had deleted many messages which could work against him as evidence of theft and blackmailing, said Duan Zhengyi, a police officer from the Zhongshan Road N. Police Station who was in charge of the case.
"Fan claimed that Xu voluntarily gave the money to him," Duan said.