Police expose phone-scam tricks, urge vigilance

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2011-06-17

BEIJING - China's Ministry of Public Security disclosed on Friday detailed tricks used in phone scams to warn citizens to be on guard against these types of criminals.

The ministry made the disclosure following the arrest of 598 suspects, including 186 mainlanders, 410 Taiwan residents, one Cambodian and one Vietnamese on June 11.

In a typical case, swindlers call victims and falsely claim to be police officers, procurators or bank staff, and then persuade them to transfer money into the criminals' accounts.

In some cases, while pretending to be police officers, they tell victims that their bank accounts are being used by criminal gangs for money laundering and urge them to transfer their money to a "safe account".

In other cases, victims are told that they are involved in economic crimes, and the police need their identity card numbers and bank account information for the investigation.

Often, swindlers have the names and home addresses of victims so as to sound more authentic.

Sometimes criminals are aided in their scams by illegal telecom operators who make it appear as if the incoming call has originated from an official bureau or office, such as a police station.

In the largest phone-scam heist, a woman from Chongqing municipality transferred 3.99 million yuan ($617,000) into the con artists' account. She was told her current bank card was invalid and needed to transfer her money to a new card.

According to preliminary statistics, such scams took place in 30 provincial regions and the money involved reached over 70 million yuan.

The ministry started to investigate these cases while exchanging information and views with its Taiwan counterpart.

Later, mainland and Taiwan police discovered that the leaders of the criminal racket were hiding in Taiwan, while the majority of laundering locations were in Guangdong province and Chongqing, along with Cambodia and Indonesia.

Police from the mainland and Taiwan, with the help of police forces from the Southeast Asian nations, have broken up 106 swindling bases and confiscated a large amount of tools used by the suspects, such as bank cards, computers and cell phones.