Million dollar scam: 482 Chinese arrested

Chinese police arrested 482 Chinese nationals from several countries including Sri Lanka who were allegedly involved in a transnational telephone fraud, China Daily reported today.

Accordingly, on Wednesday, mainland police (Chinese Police), assisted by Taiwan police, worked with their counterparts in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Fiji to bust a large cross-border telephone scam gang, an official said.

“On early Wednesday, police from these countries and regions carried out a cross-regional arrest action,” Yang Dong, deputy director of the criminal investigation department under the ministry, told China Daily.

Chinese Police arrested 482 suspects, including 177 people from the Chinese mainland, 286 from Taiwan and 19 from Thailand and Myanmar, who allegedly were connected with 510 telecom swindling cases, and cheated Chinese victims out of 73 million yuan ($11 million) from 2010 to 2011, Yang said.
"The operation is a major success in international judicial cooperation," Yang said.

Sri Lankan police yesterday said that 17 Chinese including six women were arrested by the CID at Rajagiriya yesterday on charges of having defrauded more than two million dollars from several banks in China.

The fraud case unraveled in November, when a financial manager surnamed Sha from an investment company in Suzhou, East China's Jiangsu province, reported to local police that she had been swindled for 12.6 million yuan through telephone fraud.

After the investigation, police discovered that the swindler who called Sha pretended to be a local police officer. Over the next three days, the suspects again pretended to be staff from an anti-money laundering special work team, and asked Sha to transfer the company's financial fund to a "safe" designated account, which Sha did.

In early May, the ministry sent six investigation teams consisting of 70 police officers to the six countries to assist them with gathering evidence and making arrests.
Yang said the suspects were based in Taiwan and funded the whole fraud operation. Others were divided into several major groups, including phone calls, network maintenance, and specialists in withdrawing, transferring and laundering money.

"The ring leaders bought or rented network servers and equipment to set up the host computer and circuits in Taiwan, and calling bases were scattered in Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Indonesia and even Fiji," he said.

"Meanwhile, they mainly hired unemployed young men from the Chinese mainland, who were cheated to work abroad with high salaries with tourist visas, and received formal training to form a complete fraud operation," Yang said.

Telephone fraud has become a major social security problem on the Chinese mainland, but suspects often use overseas servers and make phone calls from overseas, making it more difficult for mainland police to trace them, Yang said.