Guo Meiling, who blended online influencing with crime, sentenced to 30 months in prison over illegal diet pills
- She is more famous for her pseudonym, Guo Meimei, and just got out of jail in July 2019
- Years ago, she was one of China’s first influencers and was known for flashing her money in viral posts
A Shanghai court sentenced Guo Meiling, a Chinese influencer better known as Guo Meimei, to two-and-a-half years in prison and fined her 200,000 yuan (US$31,080) for “selling poisonous and harmful food” on Monday.
Her accomplice, Wang Zouya, was sentenced to seven months in prison and fined 10,000 yuan (US$1,550), the Shanghai court said in a WeChat article.
Guo was among 75 people arrested by Shanghai police for selling diet food that contained banned substances in a case that involved more than 50 million yuan (US$7.77 million), Chinese news portal The Paper reported in April.
The police received a tip in December that some people were advertising “special dietary foods” online, but the products had included sibutramine, an appetite suppressant that is banned in China, the report said.
Sibutramine is a drug that can be used to treat obesity, but it also has side effects like uneven heartbeats, shortness of breath, dangerously high blood pressure and sudden numbness on one side of the body.
The police shut down three production headquarters and 24 sales stations. They confiscated more than 65,000 pills, 34kg of raw material, three pieces of machinery and more than 20,000 pieces of packaging material.
