A COUPLE of computers, 17 mobile phones and pictures of Japanese porn stars were all four middle-aged women needed to make hundreds of thousands of yuan posing as pimps on QQ, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported yesterday.

    The women, all in their 40s and with only a primary school education, used a QQ group to trick men into paying for prostitutes that didn’t exist.

    Operating from Hubei Pro-vince, a tip-off led to their June 26 arrest by Longgang police.

    The women targeted men in Guangdong, mostly factory workers, according to yesterday’s Chinese-language media reports.

    The scam was a family business. Three of the women are siblings and one is a sister-in-law, according to Longgang police.

    The scam began to unravel May 10 when a man surnamed Jiang told officers in the Ailian Police Station in Longgang that he had been cheated out of 7,500 yuan (US$1,210) when trying to buy sex through QQ.

    Police found that the QQ account received more than 10,000 messages a month.

    Each woman used several phones, some of the phones with voice-changing software installed, to communicate with men they wanted to scam.

    Initially the women named prices of up to 1,000 yuan. After receiving the money, they would call the man and ask for another 2,000 yuan as a deposit to guarantee the safety of the prostitutes.

    “Most of the victims realized they had been cheated at this stage,” said a police officer, surnamed Wang.

    “But when the men who had paid a deposit demanded a refund, the suspects would demand the victim spend 6,800 yuan to 8,800 yuan on a membership card.”

    Wang said that one man in Henggang, Longgang District, was cheated out of 22,000 yuan.

    Most of the men involved were in their 20s or 30s, according to police.

    A police task force found the suspects in Wuhan and Tianmen in Hubei Province.

    (Han Ximin)