Foreigners in Shanghai seduced by she-males
By admin on 2014-12-22

What's worse than waking up to find your money is gone? It could be finding out that the sexy lady you hooked up with last night is a transvestite.

Five Filipino transvestites accused of drugging foreign men in bars with the promise of sex went on trial in Shanghai's No. 1 Intermediate People's Court on Tuesday, accused of assault and robbery, the Oriental Morning Post reported on Wednesday.

The five "she-males," aged between 26 and 30, used their curvy figures and feminine voices to flirt with male expatriates at cocktail lounges on Tongren Road and at the Grand Hyatt Shanghai Hotel in Jing'an district, the newspaper reported.

The transvestites lured their victims to hotels, coaxed them to eat chocolates that had been secretly laced with powdered sleeping pills, and robbed them after the men fell asleep. The alleged theft of cell phones, credit cards and personal belongings netted the transvestites 310,000 yuan ($49,780) worth of stolen loot, the report said.

In one case, suspect Mark Garcia, 29, and a high-heeled accomplice named Randell Dabalus, tricked a male customer into thinking they were women at the Manhattan Bar on Tongren Road. The pretty "women" escorted their victim to his hotel, drugged him, and then stole his Rolex watch and three credit cards.

Garcia was caught on March 2 when shopping at a cosmetics store with the stolen credit cards. He later led police to the other suspects.

Prosecutors said the five transvestites were detained in March after a string of similar robberies from December of last year to February.

Garcia said they came to Shanghai from Japan in February 2008 after the financial crisis put the sex trade on hold. After months of joblessness in the city, the she-male said he used his "good-looks" to become a street hooker on Tongren Road.

The bar owners told the Global Times that they couldn't do much to prevent their customers from being seduced by attractive cross-dressers.

"Our door is open to everyone. We cannot say who can get in and who cannot," said manager Xie, at Malone's, a favorite foreigner hangout on the street populated by bars.

"Moreover, in the dim light you can not clearly distinguish men from women, so how can we know what they are doing?" she asked.

Richard O'Connell, an Englishman working in Beijing who frequents bars twice a week, told the Global Times that he thinks the Filipino tranvestites are "clever" because they managed to trick grown-up men and reaped a small fortune.

Still, he feels Chinese pubs are "much safer" places than those in his hometown.

"I wouldn't like to suspect that every woman who comes on to me is really a man," he said.
The court will render its verdict at a later date.