Five-strong team lured members of the Chinese community through fake job ads

A TEENAGE member of a Chinese kidnapping gang who threatened to kill their victims unless they were paid a ransom has been jailed for eight years.

Ming Yan, 19, of Brook Avenue, Wembley, is the final member of the five-strong team to be sentenced for his part in the violent acts which took place between July 2007 and March 2009.

The Old Bailey heard the gang, all originally from Fujian province in southeast China, kidnapped six compatriots after luring them to an address on the premise of work.

Two victims were ensnared in January last year after they responded to an advert for restaurant workers that was written in Mandarin and placed on a Chinese social networking site.

Another victim was kidnapped two months later after he was called by a ‘Mr Lin’ who was looking for a decorator.

In both cases the victims were given an address where they would meet their ‘prospective employers’.

All five were eventually nabbed after detectives, alerted by the victims, traced two of the properties that had been used by the gang.

Last week, Yan was jailed after admitting two counts of kidnap and two of blackmail during his trial in October.

In June, his four accomplices were sentenced to a total of 44 years for a variety of offences ranging from blackmail, false imprisonment and kidnap.

Detective Chief Inspector Craig Turner, of the Met’s Kidnap Unit, said: “These were organised and clearly dangerous individuals who have rightly faced justice for the terror they inflicted on their own community.”