Foreigners targeted in local scam

A Heilongjiang Province man stood trial Tuesday for running a telephone fishing scheme that prosecutors said bilked South Korean bank customers out of more than 5 million yuan ($817,085).

The defendant, Cui Yongzhe, 29, was charged with telecommunications fraud in Shanghai No.1 Intermediate People's Court. The prosecution accused Cui of overseeing the scheme, which sought to trick victims into revealing their bank account information. The court did not issue a verdict or sentence Tuesday.

Cui started the scheme at the beginning of 2012. He rented an apartment in Minhang district to use as an office and hired four women who spoke Korean to call South Korean residents while posing as bank employees or police officers, the prosecutor said in the court.

To establish credibility with the victims, Cui spoofed South Korean phone numbers so it looked as if the calls were coming from inside the country.

The callers told their victims that abnormal activity had been found in their bank accounts and asked them to log on to a website to correct the problems. The website was a fake that Cui had commissioned to fool victims into typing in their usernames and passwords. Cui would then use the information to empty their bank accounts.

Before coming to Shanghai, Cui had been involved in a similar telecom fraud. He admitted in court that he used to work as one of the callers who persuaded victims to hand over their account information.

From February to June 2012, the prosecutor said Cui stole 5.02 million yuan. Cui disputed the fact. He said that he only made several thousand yuan through the scheme.

The rest of the money in his account was either gambling winnings or money his boss had given him.

However, Cui couldn't produce evidence to show how he earned the money.

He said in court that he couldn't remember most of his account transactions and did not keep a record of them.

Cui had an accomplice who handled the bank accounts in South Korea. The accomplice's primary task was to transfer the stolen money to an account in China controlled by Kang Huzhe, who was also on trial Tuesday.

Kang, 34, denied that he knowingly participated in the fraud. As far as he knew, he was only committing minor offenses for transferring the money to Cui. "Before I was arrested, I had no idea what Cui was doing," Kang said in court.