A cult leader who promised his female followers they would go to heaven if they worked as prostitutes has been jailed for two years by a Hong Kong court.

Mo Wan-lung, 34, was convicted of luring a 19-year-old follower into serving 30 men a day to earn money for  the Green Dragon Temple.
 
The girl told the court it took her four months of working in "public relations" before she realised the cult was a sham.

By then she had earned more than $65,000 for Mo, and introduced her 14-year-old sister to the Temple.

Mo had promised the teenager her family would "become gods and go to heaven" if she worked as a prostitute for up to 18 hours a day.

She said she had pledged her body by writing her name on traditional "yellow paper" which she then burned before swallowing the ashes in rice wine.

Police said the Green Dragon Temple was formed in 1993 and had more than 60 members, including girls under 16 who were asked to raise money as prostitutes.

The case is only the latest scandal in which notoriously superstitious Chinese women have been tricked into having sex in exchange for good luck or cures.

One case forced the Singapore Court of Appeal to rule on whether oral sex was against nature, after a 47-year-old man persuaded a teenager it was the only way she could clean impure spirits from her body.

Last December a Chinese Malay medium was jailed for convincing women that sleeping with him would "appease the spirits" and save their marriages.

Another Malaysian medium molested three sisters daily for two weeks to drive out evil spirits.         - Our bureau