She said the operation cost 40,000 yuan and the rest of the money was shared between Liu and another trafficker.

The prosecutor said that during the same month, Liu brokered another trade, in Tianjin, that involved 200,000 yuan.

She told the court that Dong became an organ trafficker himself when he and Liu helped find another person willing to sell an organ to a patient who needed a liver transplant at a hospital in Changsha, capital of Hunan province.

On that occasion, 118,000 yuan allegedly changed hands.

The prosecutor told the court that the pair recruited more than 20 people who were willing to sell their organs between March and May of 2009. They found the potential donors through online postings and housed the men in two rented apartments in Shijiazhuang.

Liu insisted in court that would-be donors were well looked after.

"They lived on the floor in the apartments, and for each meal, they had meat and vegetables," he said. "I also bought four computers for them to use.

"They were free during the daytime and could wander around the residential area or stay at home to use the computers."

He said most of the men were desperately in need of money and all chose to participate and could have left at any time.

Police arrested Liu in May 2010 in the Daxing district of Beijing. Dong was arrested in the capital's Haidian district in May 2009.

The court will deliver a verdict at a later date.

The sale of human organs was banned in China in May 2007. Under the law, the only people who can donate human organs are the family members of patients. In addition, organs can be removed from suitable corpses and executed prisoners if consent forms are signed in advance.

According to statistics released by the Ministry of Health, there are 1.5 million patients in the country waiting for an organ transplant each year. Annually, there are only 10,000 such transplants.