KUNMING, Oct. 16 (Xinhua) -- A 51-year-old man has been arrested in southwest China's Yunnan Province in the country's crackdown on online rumor mongers.

Dong Rubin, who uses the online name "Bianmin", meaning "man living on the border," is suspected of falsely declaring the capital in company registration, illegal business operations and the crime of "creating disturbances," according to police authorities.

Dong had confessed to the police on the rumor-mongering procedures. He did these to gain economic profit, police said.

After being entrusted by "clients," he employed or arranged others to fabricate online posts and organized a team to comment. Then Dong himself, who is an online celebrity, commented and invited other famous bloggers to participate in the discussion to attract media attention until the clients' demands were met.

He is accused of starting rumors about four Huang family brothers in March 2011, defaming them as gang members, after he received 90,000 yuan (14,656 U.S. dollars) from a businessman who was in conflict with the brothers in 2011.

To make the post eye-catching, the four brothers were called "Huang Silang," the name of a local bully in then Chinese blockbuster "Let Bullets Fly."

In January this year, Dong learned that a property company attributed poor sales of a real estate project in Xuanwei City to a thermal power plant nearby, and he told the company's owner that he could use rumors to force the power plant to shut down or relocate.

Dong and his team fabricated information that the plant had led to a large number of cancer cases in a village. They posted 39 such articles online and succeeded in making it a hot topic.

Dong's team got 100,000 yuan from the "cancer village" rumors, police said.

Dong also fabricated and spread rumors on the death of an airport official in Yunnan in May 2013, after being paid 80,000 yuan, police said.