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December 2, 2020

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5 arrested for assisting telecom scammers

By Chen Huizhi | 00:00 UTC+8 December 2, 2020 | Print Edition

Police have arrested five people for allegedly assisting telecom scammers based outside the Chinese mainland from Shanghai, officials said yesterday.

The suspects allegedly had devices enabling the scammers to call residents in China from Chinese mobile phone numbers.

Police in Jinshan District said they discovered the suspects during their investigation of a telecom scam earlier this year.

The suspects were allegedly engaged by the scammers over the Internet to provide GoIP devices.

Gu Feng, vice head of the criminal police in Jinshan, said the devices can be inserted in up to 32 SIM cards, and the accused used the Internet to connect to the devices and automatically dial from one of the SIM cards.

鈥淭his made it harder for the potential victims to recognize scams as the numbers they were called from were actually local numbers,鈥 Gu said.

He said the suspects in Shanghai needed only to be around the devices when the scammers operated from overseas, and they usually stayed with the devices in hotels to avoid police.

The suspects were rounded up on November 17, and by then, they had assisted in at least 56 scams around the country with victims cheated out of 2 million yuan (US$304,200), police said.

New bank cards

Police around the country have been cracking down on people assisting telecom scammers via technology, money laundering, bank cards and SIM cards.

Shanghai police said they have apprehended more than 2,200 suspects in the past two months, including 12 gangs that sold the cards to scammers.

People who register new bank cards or SIM cards under their names and then offer the cards to other people through lending, selling or renting are known as 鈥渃ard farmers.鈥

In one case this year, Pudong New Area police caught four suspects who allegedly purchased bank and SIM cards from their friends and relatives to feed scammers.

Police said they discovered the gang by digging into an investment scam and locating the suspects in Yiwu, Zhejiang Province.

The suspects allegedly paid 3,000 to 5,000 yuan for each card, paid the card providers more than 350,000 yuan and profited 30,000 yuan by selling the cards to scammers located both within and outside the Chinese mainland.

Metro
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