Police in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, uncovered a case of extortion using online public opinion. Criminal gangs have millions of fan accounts, and they publish negative content at key points in the promotion of film and television dramas, forcing the victim to spend money to “delete the post.”
Splicing false information about artists to create “dirty material” to gain popularity
In June this year, police in Changle, Fuzhou searched for clues and arrested three suspects including Zheng Moufeng. After investigation, it was found that this gang has been collecting and splicing all kinds of unverified negative information about celebrities, artists, movies and TV series on the Internet for a long time, publishing and disseminating relevant content through the online accounts it controls, and artificially creating the popularity of negative topics.
Wang Feng, a police officer from the Cyber Security Brigade of Changle Branch of Fuzhou Public Security Bureau:After the film and television drama is completed, it needs to be publicized and promoted to let more people know about the film and television drama before they watch it. At this point in time, Zheng Moufeng was looking for negative information or negative news about movies and TV dramas. If he heats up a negative topic, he will pin it to the top. These public relations companies will pay attention to them, and after paying attention, the public relations companies will take the initiative to find them.
Using negative public opinion as a threat to force the purchase of public opinion management services
From June 2025 to June 2026, Zheng Moufeng’s gang threatened to continue to publish negative public opinions, forced the victim in disguise to purchase the so-called “public opinion disposal” service, and used online public opinion to carry out blackmail.
According to the police, the main culprit of the gang, Zheng Moufeng, had previously worked for an Internet media company, engaged in marketing docking work for film and television dramas. In his business dealings, he gradually figured out the gray operations in the industry, such as “paid deletion of posts.”
Liu Sifen, a police officer from Changle Branch of Fuzhou Public Security Bureau:He was asked by Party A to deal with negative content. At that time, some bloggers proposed that they need to be paid to do these things. He also discovered this, and Zheng Moufeng himself understood that this was an illegal act.
After leaving his job, Zheng Moufeng gathered Huang Mouyan and others to form a gang and began to make profits by manipulating public opinion. In order to avoid legal accountability, Zheng Moufeng’s gang will not directly ask for the so-called “post deletion fee” from the victim. Instead, they will use business rhetoric such as “direct posting” and “replacement” in the circle to disguise the extortion behavior as normal business cooperation.
The so-called “direct posting” means that the film and television marketing team pays bloggers to publish relevant promotional materials, which is a normal commercial promotion activity; and “replacement” means spending money to remove negative posts and replace them with positive content that the victim needs. In fact, it is a disguised form of charging “protection fees.”
王峯：If you delete posts frequently, people will think your account is a black account. He later adopted a hidden method, setting the original post so that only he could see it, and then replaced it with a required positive post. Normally, one post costs about 1,500 yuan.
According to police investigations, Zheng Moufeng’s gang charged a “public opinion processing fee” ranging from 1,500 yuan to 2,000 yuan for each negative post. They committed dozens of crimes within a year and made an illegal profit of more than 40,000 yuan. At present, the three suspects have been subject to criminal compulsory measures in accordance with the law, and the case is under further investigation.
From marketing account to black public relations, starting with a “million-dollar account”
Behind this case is a complete and mature operating model, including raising accounts to build traffic, exploring controversial topics, artificially hyping up the popularity, and implementing extortion for cash. Every step has been carefully planned.
According to police investigation, Zheng Moufeng purchased a batch of Weibo accounts in his early years and maintained them in batches through long-term popularity and buying zombie fans, gradually increasing the number of followers of the accounts to one million levels. These accounts continue to publish marketing content in the film and television industry on a daily basis, maintaining activity and weight, paving the way for subsequent blackmail.
劉思奮：Zheng Moufeng has more than a dozen accounts, and the account with the highest number of fans reaches 1.35 million fans. There are three other accounts with hundreds of thousands of fans, ranging from 300,000 to 800,000.
After the account matrix was established, Huang Mouyan was responsible for collecting controversial topic materials within the group, while Zheng Moufeng relied on his past experience to judge the communication potential of the topic, and at the same time guided Huang Mouyan to rewrite and process the manuscript.
劉思奮：Huang Mouyan will send her prepared manuscripts and screenshots of Internet topics she has seen to Zheng Moufeng on WeChat. Because Zheng Moufeng has been in the industry for many years, he has basic judgments on these things. He said that this article can be posted, this article will be popular, and this article will not be popular, and he will make a judgment.
Find professional trolls to push negative topics to hot searches
After a negative post is published, the hype process begins in earnest. Through its own account matrix, Zheng Moufeng’s group focused on forwarding, commenting, and liking relevant content, and tried every means to push the topic to the hot search list.
王峯：Zheng Moufeng will find professional trolls on the Internet. The trolls will repost and like negative topics in batches, so that the negative topics will continue to heat up and become more popular. Film and television producers and artists will come to them under pressure.
When the film and television drama publicity and distribution team took the initiative to communicate with Zheng Moufeng, Zheng Moufeng would first use the excuses of “the blogger is unwilling to delete the post” and “the processing is difficult” to put pressure. When the injured party offered to pay for the solution, he would then throw out the charging plan that he had already prepared.
劉思奮：He just wanted to force the public relations officer of the injured party to say that he could pay and be compensated. He said that I would communicate with the blogger again. In fact, the blogger is himself. After a while, I said that the blogger said that I could ask for straight hair.
Police investigation found that this kind of “replacement” and “packaging to protect drama” routines are not uncommon in some marketing account circles. Unlike regular public opinion services, bloggers like Zheng Moufeng will actively create negative public opinions, and then treat crisis relief as a commodity for sale, forming a black closed loop of “creating crises and deleting negativity.”
Worried that “dirty material” will damage the reputation of the series, they are forced to spend money to rectify the disaster.
The head of a film and television drama promotion team told reporters that the promotion stage of a film and television drama itself is a sensitive period for public opinion. A negative post that is on the hot search can easily trigger confrontations among fans, mislead ordinary netizens, directly damage the reputation of the drama, and also implicate the commercial value of the relevant artists. Although they know that the other party is maliciously hyping up, they often choose to compromise in order to “nip it in the bud.”
Ms. Liu, the person in charge of the victim company:There are malicious speculations from some peripheral public opinions. For example, there are more public opinions among fans now, and uncontrollable marketing accounts will also follow suit. In fact, it is to infinitely spread, expand and ferment false public opinions.
Sell ”drama protection services” in a package based on the popularity of the series
According to police investigations, Zheng Moufeng’s gang will also promote packaged “drama protection services” to the victim based on the popularity of the series. After collecting the fee, he will promise not to publish negative content during the broadcast of the series, and will also allow the injured party to participate in topic management. What seems like mutually beneficial cooperation is actually a disguised form of collecting protection fees.
劉女士：He would ask for, for example, packaging, which is similar to “protecting the drama”, saying that five positive news pieces should be published and this black article should be dealt with. He may think that this drama will be a hit, and he may receive more. He needs to package 10 items, and maybe 5 items for unpopular dramas. It depends on each specific situation.
Industry insiders told reporters that 1,500 yuan to deal with a negative post has become the so-called “market price” in this field. Many victims often choose to remain silent after encountering extortion due to the small amount of money involved, difficulty in obtaining evidence, and fear of a second negative impact. This makes criminal gangs more emboldened.
王峯：This will form a black and gray industry chain, which may lead to a very bad phenomenon like having to find a public relations team to greet black bloggers first, or even paying a protection fee first when a drama is released.
According to legal experts, according to the “Interpretations of the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate on Several Issues Applicable to the Law in Handling Criminal Cases Using Information Networks to Commit Defamation” issued in 2013, “paid deletion of posts” is not limited to complete deletion in the physical sense. It includes disguised means such as blocking and only visible to oneself, which can also have the effect of blocking external communication, and can also be included in the category of “paid deletion of posts.”
Experts believe that online public opinion extortion, such as artificially concocting negative topics and manipulating traffic popularity, on the one hand forces companies to consume a large amount of operating resources to deal with malicious public opinion, creating an industry chaos in which “bad money drives out good money”; on the other hand, artificial intervention in the authenticity and flow of information will not only mislead ordinary netizens’ judgments, but also continuously erode the trust foundation of society as a whole.
Liu Xiaochun, director of the Internet Rule of Law Research Center at the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences:For corresponding institutional manipulation, the content platform must be managed in a more stringent manner, including managing the account matrix and the MCN institutions involved later. At the same time, for those involved in crimes, whether it is the platform or the regulatory agency, if there are corresponding clues, evidence and facts, they must be transferred to the public security agencies in a timely manner to form a collaborative and joint governance situation.
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