Eight people were sentenced to prison in Shanghai on Feb. 9, 2017 for selling newborn babies'personal information. (Chinanew.com/Fu Xinzhen)

Eight people were sentenced on Feb. 9 for the crime of selling more than 200,000 pieces of newborn babies' personal information, with jail time ranging from several months to several years, Chinanews.com reported. The suspects were also ordered to pay fines of between 2,000 and 5,000 RMB.

The eight suspects include two workers surnamed Han and Zhang at the Shanghai Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention. According to Han, Zhang asked early in 2014 whether he could obtain the personal information of newborn babies. Zhang claimed he had friends in the infant healthcare industry, and promised to pay Han a commission.

From early 2014 to July 2016, Han accessed the information of newborn babies from a corporate database and emailed the information to Zhang twice a month. Each email contained about 5,000 pieces of information. Zhang then sold the information to a woman surnamed Fan. The investigation found that Han, Zhang and Fan had altogether stolen more than 200,000 pieces of information in this manner.

The information was resold many times afterwards. Fan sold it to her colleague Li, who then passed it on to Wang and Huang. Wang stored the information in a computer at his workplace, until the information was stolen by his driver, Wu, who resold it and utilized it in his own baby healthcare business. To better manager his business, Wu also bought over 8,000 pieces of such information from a man surnamed Gong.