MALAYSIAN police repatriated 97 telecom fraud suspects, including 32 from Taiwan, to the Chinese mainland Saturday.

    The 97 arrived in Guangzhou around 8 p.m., all shackled and wearing black hoods.

    In late March, Malaysian and Chinese mainland police cooperated in an investigation into five transnational telecommunications fraud cases involving victims from across the mainland, and arrested a total of 117 Chinese suspects, including 65 from the mainland and 52 from Taiwan.

    Among the 52 from Taiwan, 20 were transferred to Taiwan authorities by Malaysian police April 15.

    The Chinese Government requested Malaysia to transfer the rest of the suspects to the mainland to face wire fraud charges as all the victims of the fraud are mainland residents.

    The mainland has invited Taiwan police to cooperate in handling the case, according to the Ministry of Public Security (MPS).

    In recent years, syndicates led by Taiwanese suspects and based in Southeast Asia, Africa and Oceania have been rampantly extorting money from people on the Chinese mainland through telephone calls by pretending to be law enforcement officers.

    Kenyan police also deported 77 suspected telecom scammers in another two fraud syndicates, including 45 Taiwanese, to the Chinese mainland last month.

    Chinese authorities have said they need to crack down on perpetrators of phone scams that have resulted in an estimated 10 billion yuan (US$1.54 billion) of losses each year. Scammers posing as officials from the police, government, banks or insurance companies convince their victims to transfer funds or provide personal information that can be used to steal from them.

    Victims included migrant workers, teachers, students and elderly people from the mainland, and some of them committed suicide after being cheated out of a large sum of money.

    In one case cited by the MPS in a statement, a person surnamed Yang from Duyun City of Guizhou Province was cheated by a Taiwanese-led syndicate of 117 million yuan in December 2015.

    Following Saturday’s repatriation, An Fengshan, a mainland spokesman with the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, “strongly required” Taiwan authorities to strengthen crackdown on telecom scams and measure harsh penalties for the crime.

    In the past few years, police from the mainland and Taiwan have arrested more than 7,700 suspects, most of them from Taiwan, in joint maneuvers.

    However, in many of the cases handled by Taiwan judicial organs, Taiwanese suspects were not brought to justice and victims on the mainland were unable to retrieve their money, An said earlier at a press conference.(Xinhua)