A Shandong native has been sentenced to five months jail time and fined 1,000 yuan for trying to blackmail a local restaurant. He allegedly went undercover and photographed food safety hazards around the eatery before refusing to cough up the pics unless the restaurant paid him a percentage of their earnings. Global Times reports:
The defendant bought a set of hidden cameras and came to Shanghai. He successfully applied for a job at a high-end restaurant in Jing’an district on June 21. He secretly videoed the kitchen while working, collecting images of cockroaches and evidence that members lacked health permits.
After five days of recording, he confronted the manager with the footage, claiming to be a reporter sent to the restaurant for an in-depth story. He asked the manager to look at the recordings and promised to come back.
Three days later, the man came back to the restaurant and said he would go to the media with the images unless the manager paid him 20 percent of the restaurant’s daily revenue. The manager asked his staff to call the police.
Sadly, this rogue blackmailer seems far more proactive about China’s food safety than the official bodies themselves.
