NO matter who you are, a gang of telecom fraudsters had a script designed to cheat you out of your money.

    The gang was busted by Longgang police after two enforcement actions in May and July. Thirty-five people were captured in Shenzhen, Huizhou, Jiujiang in Jiangxi Province and Sanming in Fujian Province.

    Police discovered a clue in April this year that led to the discovery of the fraud ring that was cheating people out of money via telecom devices.

    More than 60 mobile phones, 30 SIM cards and 300 bank cards were confiscated by police.

    According to police, two gang members had defrauded victims out of over 1 million yuan (US$161,100) since March.

    In order to make the phone calls seem authentic, the suspects pretended to be employers of government institutions. For instance, one of the prepared scripts was to tell the victims that they could collect an allowance for their newborns by sending over their bank accounts and personal information.

    There were various scripts aimed at people from different provinces. The police said that for residents in Chongqing, the fraud gang would pretend to be the police and claim the victims were involved in cases of drug smuggling.

    To cheat money from Guangzhou residents, the gang usually adopted a script that claimed the victims’ children were hospitalized after an accident and were in urgent need of money.

    The police said that the gang was comprised of six groups of people who were responsible for making phone calls and one group that collected the money. In order to make it more authentic, the gang included female members. More than 20 of the 35 suspects were caught in Shenzhen. (Zhang Qian, Fan Feixuan)