Zhang Junming accompanied his 19-year-old daughter, Zhang Ting, to Senxinyuan, an employment agency in Shenzhen's Buji Town, on May 26.

After paying the 20-yuan (US$2.40) introductory fee, the father waited outside the crowded office.

Soon Zhang Ting came out accompanied by a man and a woman, saying she was going to a factory near the town.

Zhang Junming only had time to remind her to turn on her cellphone before they left.

After waiting 40 minutes without hearing anything, her father tried to call her but her cellphone was turned off. He asked to see the employer's record at the job agency to no avail and in the afternoon he alerted police.

"My daughter has been missing ever since," said the father.

At least 10 women seeking jobs, all attractive and in their early 20s, have mysteriously disappeared from Senxinyuan in the past six months, according to Shenzhen Special Zone Daily.

Police believe criminals have been posing as employers and abducting the women, said Rao Songhua, Senxinyuan's general manager.

The job agency has enhanced its employer-screening process and hired extra security staff, who captured a suspect on the premises on October 12, Rao said.

The newspaper quoted sources as saying that a cross-border gang trafficking in women was behind the abduction.

Some of the women were believed to have been taken to Hong Kong.

But police refuse to comment on the case.

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