Two senior prison officers are being investigated for allegedly aiding an inmate who seduced three women through cell phone conversations and extorted more than 110,000 yuan ($17,700) from two of them.

The flaws in the country's prison management have been in the headlines in the wake of reports detailing the allegations of jailhouse sex between a woman and a 28-year-old inmate in Nehe prison in Nehe, Heilongjiang province.

The head of the prison, Wang Meng, and his deputy, Zhu Dengtao, have been held for investigation on charges of dereliction of duty, China's top procuratorate announced on Tuesday.

It said a guard had also been placed under investigation.

The provincial prison management bureau said it had sent a team to the prison to investigate the incident, though evidence is inadequate to prove that the inmate had sex with the woman.

"We failed to recover the video footage of the woman's visits to the inmate," the investigation report said, but the prison authority admitted that the prison guards had brought in five smartphones for the inmate and profited from it.

The authority also confirmed that some prison guards violated regulations and neglected their duties.

Wang Dong, the inmate, was imprisoned for robbery in 2005, for fraud in 2009 and for kidnapping in 2012.

The scandal unfolded after Wang took nude photos of one of the women and asked her to visit him in jail and have sex. He posted the photos online after she visited him and refused to do it again. Her husband, a policeman, reported the incident to the local procuratorate.

The other two women were defrauded by Wang's alleged investment programs outside the prison.

Nehe prison is also embroiled in allegations of forcing prisoners to play computer games for profit, arranging for women to visit prisoners, providing inmates with alcohol and mobile phones and giving food privileges to favored inmates.

Under the performance grading system, wardens and guards in the prison have to find ways to generate income from prisoners, which created opportunities for them to conduct illegal activities.

A 200-yuan commission was required for a guard to bring in a smartphone for prisoners, and alcohol in mineral bottles was said to be available at five times the going rate.

zhang_yi@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily USA 01/28/2015 page4)