8 sentenced for selling personal information of newborn babies in Shanghai

A Shanghai court has sentenced eight people to prison for stealing and illegally buying and selling information on newborn babies.

Sentences ranging from seven to 27 months were given along with fines from 2,000 to 5,000 yuan (around 290 to 720 U.S. dollars), Pudong New District People's Court ruled Thursday.

One of the convicts, surnamed Han, worked for the Shanghai Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The court said Zhang used another employee's account to steal information about newborns from the center.

Han sold the information to a convict surnamed Fan, who ran a baby healthcare products business. A convict surnamed Zhang working for the disease control center of Shanghai Huangpu District served as the middleman.

The information was sold on to a further five people, the court said.

Han emailed information on about 5,000 babies to Zhang every two weeks, according to court investigation. A total of 200,000 pieces of information were passed on between early 2014 and July 2016, when Han and others were detained. Endi