Police in the central province of Thua Thien-Hue, with the aid of a force from the Ministry of Public Security, have smashed a large ring that had provided porn movies via a website using overseas servers to gain an illegitimate profit of VND132 billion (US$6.25 million) within nearly one year.

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The ring hired more than 500 servers that are located abroad, mainly in France and the Netherlands, Thanh Nien newspaper quoted Colonel Pham Van Duc, deputy director of the provincial police, as saying on Saturday. On April 8, provincial police arrested four people involved in the ring, including Nguyen Duc Nhat, 31, Le Huu Hieu, 28, Nguyen Ich Vu, 29, and Le Van Ty, 26. These people traded in a large volume of porn movies on the website at Ryushare.com for a long time and gained a large illicit profit before their arrest, police said. The newspaper reported that they have been indicted for “distributing debauched cultural products” under Article 253 of the Penal Code. Police have seized from the four men two cars, three laptops, and five savings books valued at VND7.5 billion ($355,500). According to the case file, through a tip-off, local anti-social crime police in mid-2013 began to follow the activities of Hieu, a man from the province’s Phu Vang District, who had no stable job but suddenly became rich. After several investigations, police discovered that Hieu uploaded banned porn movies to Ryushare.com. They also tracked down Hieu’s relations with Nhat, residing in the southern province of Binh Duong.Over 500 overseas servers

Following Nhat’s activities, police found out that he started setting up and administering the website Ryushare.com in March 2012 with a view to offering online data sharing services and charge users for them. The man then hired more than 500 overseas servers for the site’s operation and most of these servers were installed in France and the Netherlands. Nhat paid about VND4 billion ($189,600) per month for the rental of these servers.  On July 27, 2012, Nhat established Nguyen Duc Nhat One-Member Co Ltd and then signed a business contract with OnePay Online Trade and Service Joint Stock Company, located in Hanoi’s Hoan Kiem District. Under the contract, Nhat’s company authorized OnePay to collect payments for transactions in association with Ryushare.com and transferred them to Nhat’s account at Vietcombank’s Binh Duong Province branch. After porn movies were made available online, the website’s members would create links and post them on some social networks, forums and blogs, both at home and abroad. Sixty percent of the sex website’s revenue would be paid to its existing members who had introduced new users to the site, 35 percent to Nhat, and the remaining five percent to Onepay.800,000 members According to the statistics of the investigation agency, Ryushare.com had over 800,000 members, including 80,000 VIP ones who subscribed to it at 9.96 euros per month, 34.96 euros per quarter, and 59.96 euros per year. VIP members comprised many civil servants in Thua Thien-Hue Province, investigators said. According to initial investigation, Onepay transferred VND132 billion ($6.25 million) to Nhat’s Company between January 2013 and March 10, 2014. Police are expanding their probe into the case.

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