An employee with a Chinese website is being tried in a Beijing court for trying to extort 475,000 U.S. dollars from a health product company, according to local media reports.

Public prosecutors said Li Ling, who worked for a website that handles consumer complaints, posed as a reporter in September last year and approached a commodity company saying he was investigating complaints about its aloe products, according to the Beijing Times.

Even though he was unable to identify any problems, Li asked the company to pay him 3.8 million yuan (about 475,000 U.S. dollars ) of "silence money". He said he would write a negative report about the company if his demand was not met.

Having forewarned police, the company handed over 100,000 yuan (about 12,500 dollars) to Li in a hotel room on June 25 this year. Police were waiting for him when he walked out of the room.

The case, which is being tried in Chaoyang District Court, has been extensively reported by newspapers in Beijing because of the huge sum of money involved.

Li said his father was seriously ill and he needed a lot of money. He pleaded guilty at the end of Tuesday's trial.

Several blackmail incidents involving "reporters", often "reporters" without formal certificates, were reported earlier this year. In most cases, they contacted companies with problems and asked for "silence money", threatening them with negative reports.

China's press administration reviews reporters' conduct annually. It revokes certificates of reporters who behave improperly.

China has about 150,000 officially-recognized reporters who hold press cards issued by the General Administration of Press and Publication. A total of 700,000 people work in the press field.

Analysts here said officially-recognized reporters are unlikely to engage in blackmail. "Reporters" that threaten businesses and extort money from them are most likely to be fake ones.

Source: Xinhua