Police see 23% drop in telecom fraud

The number of telecommunications fraud cases in January and February fell 23 percent year-on-year after law enforcement began a crackdown on telephone and Internet scams last December, police said Sunday.

Police said they thwarted 474 telecommunications scams during the first two months of this year, preventing potential victims from losing as much as 23.1 million yuan ($3.75 million), according to a press release from the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau. They arrested more than 300 suspects and broke up 22 dens or platforms used to carry out the scams.

In a recent case, police arrested 16 people on March 4 for selling phony charge cards by offering customers knockoff Apple and Samsung smartphones as an incentive. Police seized 500 of the devices and 20,000 fake charge cards.

The two principal suspects, surnamed Sheng and Xu, rented space in office and apartment buildings and hired people to pose as salespeople from telecommunication companies.

The phony salespeople called residents and offered them a free Apple or Samsung smartphone if they spent a specific amount of money on the prepaid cards.

One of the victims, from Pudong New Area, took them up on the offer and two days later received a package containing the charge cards and a mobile phone, police said.

To his dismay, the phone was a knockoff and the charge cards were fakes. The money he had paid to charge the cards had disappeared.

Shanghai police reminded the public to beware of text messages and telephone calls about flight cancellations, social security subsidies, after-sales service for online purchases and bank alerts because scammers often use them to trick people into giving away their account information.