Nation's anti-fraud campaign bearing fruit

Nearly 20,000 people who intended to sneak abroad illegally to carry out telecom and network fraud were stopped by police across the country from May to October, the Ministry of Public Security said on October 26.

According to the ministry, 19,000 people were stopped from leaving China illegally, and the police also persuaded 69,000 Chinese citizens, who had a high risk of involvement in such fraud overseas, to return to China. The high incidence of organizing people to conduct fraud abroad has been curtailed to some extent, the ministry said.

The campaign to fight telecom and network fraud has had great success in recent years, but a large number of criminal gangs have moved abroad to continue operating their illegal businesses, said Zheng Xiang, an official with the ministry's criminal investigation bureau. He added that they generally relocate to Southeast Asian countries.

"Due to the continued spread of the global COVID-19 pandemic since last year, it has been difficult for Chinese public security organs to carry out joint crackdowns on fraud abroad. The overseas fraud groups have grown rapidly, and fraud activities targeting Chinese citizens have become increasingly rampant," he said.

In May, the ministry launched an operation targeting the recruitment of people to go abroad and carry out fraud, the funding of such activities and the transporting of people to engage in them, said Jiang Guoli, deputy head of the bureau.

The ministry has coordinated different departments, including criminal investigation, cybersecurity, technical investigation, railway, civil aviation and immigration administration bodies, to push forward the operation, which has effectively cut off the criminal chain of overseas fraud gangs recruiting people from China, Jiang said.

Since May, police nationwide have busted 9,419 illegal outbound gangs with more than three members, resolved 4,160 criminal cases and arrested 33,860 suspects, including 931 who organized recruitment activities and 913 who transported and received participants.

After interrogating some of these suspects, police in Luzhou, Sichuan province, in June learned that a gang had recruited people from Sichuan, Hubei and Yunnan provinces to smuggle people overseas through the southwest border to participate in fraudulent activities. Fifty of these gang members have been arrested, and other gang suspects are wanted for arrest.

The gang baits people with high salary jobs and covers their transportation expenses, and then forces them to obey demands to engage in fraud, Sichuan police said. People who violate their rules or fail to carry out ordered tasks are often assaulted.

Telecom fraud has been a public hazard. Police nationwide resolved about 262,000 telecom and network fraud cases from January to September this year, an increase of 41 percent year-on-year, and arrested 373,000 suspects involved in such crimes, about 116 percent more than during the same period last year. The police also interrupted payments in possible fraud cases worth 277 billion yuan ($40 billion).

On Oct 19, a draft law on anti-telecom and network fraud was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for first review. It aims to strengthen preventive systems related to information, capital, technology and personnel involved with fraud, and it urges the foreign affairs and public security departments to promote international law enforcement and judicial cooperation to push forward the fight against cross-border telecom and online fraud.