BEIJING, Aug. 14 -- A man stood trial on Thursday for masterminding a number of online rumors and making profits by deception, a Beijing court said.

Yang Xiuyu, with the screen name of "Lierchaisi", stood trial at Beijing Chaoyang District People's Court.

Yang, 41, founder of the Erma Company, was accused of making up information to lure followers on Weibo.com, China's equivalent of Twitter, the court said in a statement.

In 2011, Yang reached a deal with a cultural development company to stage a publicity stunt for an artist. The artist, An, was to wear a monk's robe and board a boat on a downtown Beijing lake with two young women. Video of their meeting was tweeted and led web users to believe that a monk was having an affair.

Yang's company was paid at least 170,000 yuan (27,500 U.S. dollars) for the fabrication, the court statement said.

Yang was also behind more fakery in 2012 when a young model claimed her "sugar daddy" had promised her a trip to the London Olympics by charter plane, at a cost of 8.88 million yuan, causing uproar on the web.

It was in fact a stunt to promote a travel agency's London Olympics tours. Yang's company was paid 190,000 yuan.

The court also found that Erma made more than 530,000 yuan between 2008 and 2013 by posting false information and deleting critical posts at customers' request. An Erma employee, Lu Mei, was brought to court and confessed to posting and deletion of posts.

The court is yet to announce a ruling.

Yang's former employee Qin Zhihui, known as "Qinhuohuo" in cyberspace, confessed to spreading rumors about Chinese celebrities and the government during his trial at the same court in April.

Qin was the first person to appear on rumormongering charges since the Ministry of Public Security decided to target those who spread online rumors last August.