Fake press cards used by fake journalists

The Beijing Youth Daily today printed a Xinhua story about a fraud involving three illegal Internet journalists and an illegal website and publication.

On May 29, the three men appeared in the Land and Resources Department of Xingtang County, Hebei Province. They identified themselves as journalists from a website called "China Law", requested an interview to discuss problems at the government office.

The mention of these problems was followed by a request for the government officers to subscribe to a print journal connected with the website.

But the government officers were suspicious and called the police.

The police found that the the three journalists' press cards (official papers that authorize Chinese journalists to do reporting work) were issued by the China Law website, not by the General Administration of the Press and Publication which is supposed to issue such documents.

The police officers, who apparently didn't know how to confirm the validity of the press cards, tried different ways to confirm the three journalists' identities by calling the number on their name cards, and searching for information on the website "China Law". While the police were still unsure if these people were real journalists, one of the suspects "knelt down and begged for leniency" and tried to bribe the police officers by offering them cash. The newspaper article says that the kneeling down and bribery indicate that they must be fake journalists.

According to the newspaper article, further investigation has shown that the China Law website is an "illegal website" without a license for online publication. On May 30, the police raided the website, and arrested a suspect named Mu Jingji. From October 2006, Mu has recruited 82 fake journalists, and sold 935 subscriptions for the journal.

The article does not explicitly state what the crime is, but aside from publishing illegal websites and journals, and forging press passes, it seems the main scam was for the fake journalists to threaten to write fake exposés about government officers and ask for hush money.

The China Law website was located at fzchina.com.cn but now seems to be offline.