With the approval of the Hubei Provincial Higher People's...

With the approval of the Hubei Provincial Higher People's Court, courts in Xiangfan, Jingzhou, and Yichang carried out execution orders on three principal suspects: Yu Lin, Yang Yiyong, and Zhao Hongyan. The courts also sentenced 30 other suspects to life imprisonment or terms of imprisonment, the Hubei Daily reported.
According to the newspaper, in 1995, Yu Lin, a Xiangfan native, gathered 30 former prisoners and vagrants to form a criminal syndicate.
The paper said that the gang committed blackmail, assault, fraud, and illegal firearms trafficking. It added that the gang assaulted four people and accumulated several million yuan in wealth.
Yu reportedly offered bribes to Lei Xinyuan (7191 2450 0337), deputy director of the Public Security Bureau of Laohekou city.
In 1997, Yang Yiyong, a Jingzhou native from Songzi County, gathered 10 thugs to form a criminal syndicate, the paper reported. They committed homicide, assault, and blackmail in the Songzi, Wuhan, and Yidu areas; conducted illegal firearms trafficking and accumulated several ten thousand yuan in wealth, the paper reported. Yang was said to have offered bribes to Chen Lin (7115 2651), deputy director of the Xinjiangkou town police station.
A year after marrying a Taiwanese in 1997, Zhao Hongyan contacted the Taiwanese "Xue Fu Lan" company in Taiwan's Kaohsiung city. She arranged false marriages to obtain visas for 10 mainland Chinese females, the paper reported. The Chinese women were then sent to work as prostitutes in Taiwan.