Fake journalist sentenced to 10 years in prison for fraud

BEIJING - A man who committed fraudulent activities while pretending to be a journalist has been sentenced to 10 years in prison, China's National Anti-Pornography and Anti-Illegal Publications Office said Thursday.

Yang Junlin, who defrauded 502,000 yuan ($82,000), was sentenced by the People's Court of Jiangxian county in North China's Shanxi province. He was also fined 100,000 yuan by the court.

In September 2012, Yang received 30,000 yuan from a person involved in a forced land demolition in order to investigate the uneven distribution of compensation payments.

In 2010, Yang, calling himself a head of a magazine named Focus, swindled a citizen of East China's Hangzhou city by saying that he could solve a land demolition compensation issue.

Yang also committed other cases of fraud, including defrauding a person from Yuzhou of Henan province for solving economic disputes concerning a coal mine.

Investigations found that the license of a film and television center Yang used for committing the fraud had been revoked by Henan's radio, television and film authority in 2000. The magazine was registered in Hong Kong, but not approved or put on record by the mainland's publication authority.

Yang has no press card approved and issued by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, and therefore no journalism qualification.