A Chinese man claims he was kidnapped by a criminal gang whose members used him like a “blood slave,” routinely draining his blood and selling it on the black market.

We’ve heard of people being kidnapped and having their organs removed, but one 31-year-old man from Beijing claims his kidnappers were more interested in his blood. The man, whose identity has not been revealed, to protect his privacy, used to work as a security guard in Beijing and Shenzhen, but decided to try his luck as a nightclub bouncer after finding an online job advert. The pay was a lot better, so he decided to travel to the southwestern region of Guangxi for an interview, not knowing that the job offer was actually a trap.

Photo: LuAnn Hunt/Unsplash

The man was kidnapped by members of a criminal gang as soon as he arrived in Guanxi, and smuggled to the Cambodian coastal city of Sihanoukville, via Vietnam, where he was allegedly sold to a local gang for $18,500. He was forced to carry out various telemarketing fraud schemes in order to earn his own ransom, and also had to let the gang routinely extract his blood, so they could sell it for profit.

According to sources in China, the man had 800ml of blood taken from him every month since August last year, and had the bruised arms to prove it, upon his rescue. Apparently, criminals had started draining blood from the veins in his head, after those in his arms and legs became unusable.

The American Red Cross recommends blood donations not be made more frequently than every 56 days, but the gang turned to their blood slave every month. They even threatened to sell his organs on the black market, if he didn’t cooperate.

The man only managed to escape his captors when one of the gang members switched sides. He managed to return his China, where he was eventually committed to a hospital with multiple organ failure, due to the frequent blood extractions.

 

The former blood slave told authorities that there were at least seven other men being held captive by the gang, but they didn’t have their blood taken as often as he did. Apparently, he has the O blood type, which is universal, making it more valuable on the black market.

This shocking story has been doing the rounds on Chinese social media for the past week, and Chinese authorities have been issuing warnings to people to be very wary of Cambodia job offers that sound too good to be true, and only use formal communication channels.