On 11 Feb. 2025, China’s Supreme People’s Court (SPC) released a set of typical cases on combating cyber extortion crimes, aiming to highlight the court’s efforts to crack down on emerging forms of online extortion and encourage victims to seek legal protection.
This series includes six cases involving various emerging forms of cyber extortion, such as spreading online rumors, making malicious allegations, extorting companies by threatening to expose fabricated corporate “misconduct”, and blackmailing victims via “sextortion”.
For instance, in Case No.1, defendant Sun fabricated and spread false negative information, including allegations of marital infidelity, child sexual abuse, and illegal business activities. Sun anonymously spread these rumors to the victims’ relatives, colleagues, clients, and the general public, repeatedly threatening the victim for large sums of money. Even after the victim showed suicidal tendencies, Sun continued the personal attacks and extortion. The court found Sun guilty of extortion with particularly grave circumstances, and sentenced him to eight years and seven months in prison and fined him RMB 100,000.
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