Selling Kids For Online Gaming Cash in China

This one is pretty hard to believe, particularly when the punch line is that the offending parties have claimed they didn’t know they were breaking the law. It seems a couple in Dongguan, Chinas old each of their three children in the last couple of years in order to obtain cash for playing online games in Chinese internet cafés. Apparently, the man and the woman in this relationship, both under the age of 21, met and bonded over a mutual obsession for online gaming. Here’s the sequence of events: The youngsters had a baby boy in 2008, then another child in 2009. After the second child, another boy, was born they decided to sell him to get cash for online games. Then they decided to sell the first child, and got about $4,600 for him, ten times the amount for the first kid. Then, when the couple had a third boy, they sold that little guy for the same amount is as the first boy, which is the second kid they sold. Confused? Well, so was the mother of the woman who bore the children. And when she found out what her daughter and her boyfriend had done, she turned them both in to the authorities. A few more details are available at the link. Let this be a warning that it would be better to quit World of Warcraft than to start seeing dollar signs on your kids when you feel short of funds. (ABC News Radio – Selling Kids for Online Gaming Cash)