Lin Rongxin, a 34-year-old Chinese national who worked in Singapore as a machinery technician, was sentenced on 5 December to 31 years imprisonment and 24 strokes of the cane for exploiting 20 young girls and women in Singapore via an extortion scheme.
Lin had pleaded guilty to 7 charges which included rape, making threats, and instigating a victim to make voyeuristic videos; he had another 57 charges considered during his sentencing, according to The Straits Times.
Background
Lin, who is a married man with a son, targeted girls between the ages of 14 and 19 who were from China but studying in Singapore.
He met these victims on apps like WeChat and TanTan using fake personas, making them send him explicit videos and pictures, and he would sometimes engage in self-stimulation activities with the victims on camera.
He would then blackmail the victims into sending him more obscene videos or money, threatening to upload their videos if they didn’t.
Using his fake persona, he would ask them to sleep with another man, who was actually Lin himself without the victims knowing.
Some of the victims ended up being in an intimate relationship with him.
Lin was also suffering from STDs including Herpes and Hepatitis B while he was having intercourse with 5 of the victims.
Lin lives with his wife and a 3-year-old son in a dormitory here in Singapore.