3 blackmailers in jail after bomb scare
By Xiao Min (Shanghai Star)
Updated: 2004-06-25 09:43

Police have arrested three men in connection with the attempted extortion of 200,000 yuan from a Shanghai department store. The store had been told that unless the money was paid, a bomb hidden in its building would be exploded.

The Shanghai Morning Post reported that a thorough search by police last Monday failed to find any explosives in the Yaohan Department Store in Pudong.

And after 24 hours of investigation, police tracked down and arrested three men in Changzhou in neighbouring Jiangsu Province.

At 2:00pm last Monday, the office of the Shanghai Yaohan Department Store received a call from one of the blackmailers. A man speaking in Mandarin said he had put a bomb somewhere in the store and demanded that 200,000 yuan (US$24,200) be paid into a certain bank account.

Special constables and fireman raced to the shopping mall immediately and searched the several storeys of the Yaohan store unsuccessfully.

At the same time as this search was going on, other firefighters were called to the demolition site of the Shanghai Friendship Store where suspicious articles were found but which later proved to be harmless.

After failing to find any bombs in the Yaohan store police looked into the bank account number left by the blackmailer. They found the account had been opened in Changzhou by a man using the false name, "Li Wei". Investigating police went to Changzhou immediately and at noon the following day, June 22, they noticed a man pacing up and down near an ATM machine at the gate of a local community.

Police found a mobile phone and bankcard in his pocket which identified him the blackmailer.

He confessed that his real name was Zhao Shuye and that he and two friends had concocted the scheme to extort 200,000 yuan from the Yaohan Department Store. With information he provided, police were able to arrest his two accomplices the same day.

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