Beijing police bust telephone fraud gang

Beijing police circulated a notice on Saturday about the fraud gang who used illegally acquired personal information to promote sales of false collectible items through telephone marketing.

More than 300 suspects have been detained but the company's president, surnamed Han, is still at large.

The company, Tistina International Collection, was besieged by the police in Fengtai district on Wednesday and more than 400 employees were taken away for investigation.

Initial investigations showed that there were about 300 telephone operators in the company and each was required to make more than 200 phone calls to promote sales every day.

The company has handled more than 30,000 transactions, raking in over 100 million yuan ($16.2 million).

The circular stated that the so-called collectible items were actually bought cheaply from flea markets and were sold at high prices with new packaging and false certification. The price tag of the first series of Renminbi bank notes on the company's website was 4.5 million yuan.

Gu Youjun, a lawyer from Beijing Yixing Law Firm said, "In this case, the suspects will be most likely charged for fraud and the punishment could be up to life imprisonment."

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a new regulation on the protection of the personal information of Net users in June. It will come into effect on September 1.

However, Wei Wuhui, assistant professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, told the Global Times that it is almost impossible for netizens to protect themselves from information leakage.

Wei said that most cases related to personal information leakage would not usually be accepted by the judicial system unless the leakage resulted in great financial loss or casualties.

"Never post any important information online, because once it is out there, there is the possibility that it could be found by someone," Wei said.

According to Wei, hackers can break into the database of websites with weak security measures in order to get personal information.

Chinese police have broken up 468 gangs and arrested 1,213 people for suspected personal information trafficking, according to a statement released Sunday by the Ministry of Public Security.

A total of 1,327 cases of personal information trafficking were solved and more than 700 million pieces of personal information were seized by police from more than 20 public security organs including Beijing, Hebei and Shanghai, according to the statement.

The ministry has launched three nationwide campaigns to crack down on such criminal activities since 2012.