Chinese crime gang 'lured foreigners to karaoke honey traps'

Shanghai police arrest 15 suspects accused of luring foreigners to ‘karaoke honey traps’ before demanding they pay massive bills

Victims were picked up by touts and lured into 'karaoke honey traps' Photo: Alamy

By Tom Phillips, Shanghai

 24 Jun 2014

Fifteen members of a “karaoke crime gang” have been arrested by Shanghaipolice for allegedly luring witless foreigners into underground crooning dens and forcing them to pay thousands of pounds for the pleasure.

The group reportedly specialised in ripping off foreign singing enthusiasts who had ventured onto the streets of Pudong, a skyscraper cluttered district on the east side of this Asian mega-city.

Victims were picked up by touts and lured into “karaoke honey traps” on the east side of Shanghai’s Huangpu river.

Inside, they were offered a night in the company of “beautiful hostesses,” the Shanghai Daily newspaper reported.

However, the men soon discovered that they had come to exercise their debit cards rather than their vocal cords.After being allowed to stay in the karaoke club for “an unspecified amount of time”, the victims were informed by “large men” that they would have to cough up thousands of pounds for their experience.

Police discovered the illegal scheme after one victim – an Egyptian male who claimed he had been drawn to the karaoke honey trap while taking a “night time stroll” – fled a car in which the gang was holding him. “He jumped from the vehicle and ran to a nearby police car,” the Shanghai Daily reported.

Police subsequently caught the gang, whose members admitted conning more than 200,000 yuan (£18,900) out of at least seven victims, whose nationalities were not given.

China is famed for its infatuation with karaoke. Last year a “luxury KTV bar” stocked with Black Label whiskey, Chinese beer and golden cans of Red Bull was even discovered inside a Communist Party training centre in Shaanxi province.

However, the country’s penchant for late-night crooning sessions has a distinctly dark side. In 2012 two people were hacked to death with a meat cleaver in a karaoke club in the city of Xi’an following a row over a four-year-old child who had refused to surrender the microphone.