After two young people died within days of each other after being scammed out of their savings by telecom fraudsters, experts have argued that such cons are so common because of poor information protection and police inaction.
As of Sunday, six people suspected of wrongdoing in the case of Xu Yuyu, a high school graduate from Linyi, East China's Shandong Province have been detained, Beijing-based newspaper The Mirror reported on Sunday.
Xu died on August 21 after a conman defrauded her of 9,900 yuan ($1,488).
Xu, who had been admitted to the Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, was asked by the scammer to send the money she had set aside for tuition to a third party in order to get a (non-existent) scholarship. She died of "cardiac and respiratory arrest" after reporting the case to police, the Qilu Evening News reported Thursday.
The Linyi publicity department said on Friday on its Sina Weibo account that police are also investigating a similar case, in which Song Zhenning, a 21-year-old university student who died of a heart attack on August 23 after being conned out of 2,000 yuan.
A student surnamed Wang, who studies at the university to which Xu was admitted, told the Global Times on Wednesday that three out of four students in her dorm have received similar texts and calls since they were admitted to university.
Rampancy
Telecom fraud requires little initial investment and can rake in high profits, so the number of fraudsters has risen rapidly over recent years, Chen Zhonglin, dean of the Law School at Chongqing University, told the Global Times on Monday.
"But usually people don't take it very seriously when they receive such phone calls or texts, unless they suffer heavy losses," said Chen.
Police are also unlikely to take telecom fraud seriously if it only involves a small amount of money, said Xiang Ligang, CEO of cctime.com, a professional telecom portal in China.
"Tracing telecom cons takes a lot of effort but earns less credit than murder and robbery cases," Xiang told the Global Times on Monday.
However, the fact that six suspects in Xu's case were detained days after the initial report proves that police have the ability to solve cases quickly if they choose to do so, Xiang added.
However, Xiang said that grass-roots public security bureaus don't have sufficient manpower and funds to deal with the majority of telecom frauds - most of which are far less high-profile than Xu's case - and their systems are outdated.
Public security bureaus, banks and telecom departments should build an effective nationwide system to combat telecom scams, Xiang advised.
Data leaks
"The rampancy of telecom fraud also results from the fact that citizens' personal information can be easily leaked nowadays," Wang Fu, a lawyer with Beijing Zhenbang Law Firm, previously told the Global Times.
"It (personal information) might be given away by these who own the data, or obtained by hackers. It is also possible that technology providers, such as websites, leak data," said Xiang.
There are also people who earn their living by collecting and selling information, which means there is an industrial chain to satisfy the demands of scammers, said Xiang.
On Friday, an employee from SF Express, a Chinese courier firm, went on trial at a court in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province for leaking 1.8 million customers' information after he sold his company account to someone else, the Nandu Daily reported on Monday.
In Xu's case, the fraudster called from a phone number starting with 171, which is believed to have been provided by a virtual telecom server, according to Qilu Evening News.
"As such virtual telecom servers do not require registrants' real personal information, telecom fraudsters can easily obtain numbers online, and it is impossible for police to trace these numbers," Chen added.
On Monday, a Global Times reporter went to a telephone card seller in Beijing who said he has two different types of telephone cards, an untraceable one that is not registered and also cannot be charged again, and another that has already been registered with the ID information of a third person.
"The dealer can always find ID information to register, so don't worry," the seller said.
