NANSHAN police recently busted a criminal ring that had allegedly cheated investors with fake futures transactions involving 1 billion yuan (US$145 million).

About 800 police officers were sent out to raid 14 dens and arresting 240 suspects in Shenzhen, Dongguan, Huizhou and Shenyang on March 30 in the largest-ever arrest action. A total of 88.4 million yuan was frozen.

Police have received reports since February, saying that they had suffered heavy losses and suspected they were cheated into speculating on futures based on cultural and artworks on a platform of the Guangdong Creative Culture Property Exchange Center. One of the investors lost 200,000 yuan within half an hour.

An investigation showed that the company was established in March last year. The company, disguised as a culture exchange platform, purchased fake transaction software, fabricated a dozen artificial artworks and put them on the platform to pose as nonexistent futures transactions. They developed WeChat and computer versions of the software to promote fictitious transactions and charged high commissions and service fees. A commission could be as high as 10.56 percent of a transaction value.

To maximize their illicit profit, the company developed a vast quantity of members through corporate agents.

“Each employee of the corporate agents had about 40 to 50 QQ accounts and they used different identities to add QQ friends. They fabricated inspiring stories and boasted about their success in futures trading,” said Liu Haihua, an officer with the economic crime investigation brigade of Nanshan District Public Security Bureau.

Once you are convinced, they will pull you into the video chat room of a corporate agent to receive so-called training on how to earn a lot of money in a short period of time through futures trading, facilitated by some other members who pretend to be tutors. To create a booming business atmosphere, some members would pretend to be investors and trick others into downloading the software, opening a business account and tying it to their bank account to make transactions.

During the training, the tutors would persuade investors to make frequent transactions, using excuses, such as an unfavorable market situation, so that they can charge high commissions.

A preliminary investigation showed that around 7,000 people had been cheated, some of whom didn’t even realize they had been cheated as the tactic was very deceptive. Police are calling for those who have had similar experiences to report them to the Nanshan Police Station and contact police officer Guo Deshan at 18188612289, 0755-26640284. (Han Ximin)