A SHENZHEN woman who was cheated out of more than 440,000 yuan (US$70,400) in a phone scam sued the Shenzhen branch of China Mobile for allowing users to use fake numbers for incoming calls.

    The case was heard in Futian District Court on Wednesday. It is the first of its kind in China in which a telecom operator is blamed for a phone scam.

    The woman, surnamed Yang, received a phone call April 7 from caller number 095555. The caller claimed to be an employee with China Merchants Bank (CMB) and said that Yang’s credit card payment with the bank was overdue and asked her to pay it off by 4 p.m. that day.

    Yang later received another phone call purportedly from 0755-95555 and the caller said her CMB credit card in Shanghai was overdue. The caller also said that someone stole her ID card, used it to open the Shanghai account and that the bank had called the Shanghai police who would contact Yang soon.

    Yang, as expected, got a call purportedly from a police officer in Shanghai a few minutes later and the number displayed was 021-62588800. The “police officer” asked Yang to verify his number. Yang discovered that the number did belong to the Shanghai police and started to believe the caller. The “police officer” told Yang that she was suspected of being involved in a credit card scam in Shanghai and that Yao Xuhui, a procurator with the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, would help her.

    Yang soon received a call from a person who called himself Yao, who asked Yang to open the online banking service of her account with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and persuaded her to reveal her password and the password of her card with Ping’an Bank.

    The swindlers withdrew a total of 442,892 yuan from Yang’s bank accounts.

    Yang sued the Shenzhen branch of China Mobile, claiming that the phone services provided by China Mobile have serious faults that allow fake caller numbers to be displayed. She asked the company to compensate her loss of 442,892 yuan along with interest.

    Yang’s lawyer said telecom operators are technologically capable of identifying fake numbers and banning them from calling their customers’ phones.

    China Mobile Shenzhen said that the caller numbers involved in the case were from China Unicom, China Telecom and China Tietong and that those three operators should be liable.

    The company’s lawyer said swindlers usually use software to forge a number to be displayed on the phone of a callee.

    The lawyer added that the telecom authority of Guangdong has issued rules that require callers’ operators to tackle the problem.

    The court has yet to render a verdict.  (Zhang Yang)