19,000 people have been arrested in China in 2016 for committing telecom frauds, officials said today.
The Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) increased efforts to crack down on telecom and Internet frauds and supervised the handling of 62 major fraud cases last year, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
Chinese police arrested 19,345 suspects for telecom frauds last year, according to the SPP.
One case reportedly led to the death of Xu Yuyu, an 18-year-old high school graduate from Linyi City in east China's Shandong Province. Xu was reported to have lost USD 1,400 meant for university tuition fees to fraudsters, the SPP said.
The Ministry of Public Security (MPS) destroyed a transnational telecom fraud gang in Cambodia, catching 39 suspects and paying compensation of more than 360,000 yuan (USD 52000) to 21 victims.
Telecom-based fraud, in which suspects cheat people through telecommunication channels, is a growing crime in China.
The frauds are also in the name of charity or disaster-relief money Trojan programmes and phishing websites, the report had said.
