Mainland and Taiwanese police have launched their biggest crackdown on the growing problem of cross-strait telephone scams, which have seen people across the mainland lose millions of yuan.
Yesterday's operation involved thousands of police from 17 mainland provinces and 500 from Taiwan, after the mainland's Public Security Ministry found the island had become a phone-fraud hotspot, with Taiwanese gangs involved in more than 400 cross-strait cases since September, netting 36 million yuan (HK$41 million).
The joint operation was one of the biggest since the mainland and Taiwan signed an agreement on cross-strait crime fighting in April last year that paved the way for closer co-operation between the two sides.
Mainland and Taiwanese police arrested 148 people suspected of involvement in telephone scams and money laundering after raiding 57 venues in 17 mainland provinces and the island yesterday. Sixty-six of those arrested were Taiwanese.
The mainland ministry said many telephone scams used software that replaced the number displayed to a call's recipient with one of police or government. The fraudsters would then impersonate officials or police and warn the target their phone bill was overdue or they were suspected of involvement in money laundering. They would then instruct the target of the scam to transfer money to a designated bank account.
Some 80 small mainland telecoms operators were found to have been providing technical support to telephone-scam gangs.
State media reported that one well-educated, middle-aged man in Shenzhen transferred 22.3 million yuan to 36 bank accounts in the space of six days after receiving 50 telephone calls from a Taiwanese-operated criminal gang claiming that he was suspected of being involved in money laundering and should co-operate with the police.