Celebrity blackmail bid nets two years in jail

A man who tried to extort 300,000 yuan from 20 film stars, singers and TV hosts and successfully squeezed 3,000 yuan from one singer was sentenced to two years at Changping district court on Friday.

Wang Yandong, 24, from Jilin province, graduated from Vladivostok State University of Economics in Russia in 2005 before moving to Beijing in search of work, Shuang Yu'e, the judge in charge of the case, told METRO.

The court heard that Wang opened a guesthouse in Chongwen district in 2008 and subsequently got to know Wang Bin, the acclaimed TV drama director behind Langduhua, a popular TV series about the War Against Japanese Aggression.