A SHENZHEN-BASED company suspected of involvement in illegal fundraising was shut down in a joint operation by police in Shenzhen, Guangzhou and five other cities in Guangdong, it was revealed at a press conference by the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department on Tuesday, the New Express reported Wednesday.

    The company’s head, surnamed Li, established the company in June 2013 after he was released from prison for illegal fundraising in 2010.

    By hiring marketing agents to hand out flyers, the company swindled over 800 million yuan (US$123 million) out of more than 7,000 investors from 10 provinces, the press conference was told.

    The company promised to offer an annual return of 24 percent of the investment if investors put money into a hotel owned by the company. The company also promised that anyone who invested 50,000 yuan or more would be repaid with the revenue generated by one hotel room.

    The police detained Li and his partners April 9 last year and obtained evidence including financial records and contracts from their office.

    More than 200 police officers were dispatched in a province-wide operation the next day, raiding 10 branch offices located in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan and Jiangmen and detaining 91 suspects, according to the report.

    Li and another 20 suspects were arrested by the police and the leading suspects have been handed over to Shenzhen’s procurators.

    It was one of the 210,000 criminal cases police across the province cracked down on in 2015, the report quoted Lu Feng, the spokesperson of the provincial public security department, as saying.

    Lu said Guangdong police detained 148,463 people and arrested 112,186 suspects last year. The number of criminal cases declined 14.13 percent last year compared with 2014.

    In 2016, the department will focus on drug-related crimes, theft, robbery, telecom fraud and financial crimes, according to Lu.

    It was also announced that the anti-drug departments in Dongguan, Shenzhen, Huizhou and Zhaoqing broke up a drug ring based in Zhaoqing City last month, detaining 32 suspects and seizing more than a ton of crystal meth.

    One of the suspects, surnamed Liu, was shot and injured by police after hitting several police officers with his car while being pursued.

    (Zhang Yang, Liu Qi)