SHENZHEN’S anti-telecom fraud center recently intercepted HK$31 million (US$3.98 million), which had been swindled and transferred to a Ping An Bank account.

On May 11, the anti-fraud center received a call for help from an accountant from a company in Hong Kong, saying the boss of its mother company in the U.S. had called from a fixed-line phone and ordered her to send HK$31 million to a designated account in Shenzhen so it could purchase a mainland company.

The accountant, surnamed Lin, later realized that it was a scam and called Shenzhen police for help.

The police anti-fraud team initiated a quick response through cooperation with Ping An Bank and intercepted the money before it could be transferred to other accounts by fraudsters.

This was the single largest amount involved in a fraud case in the city’s telecom fraud history.

According to data from the Shenzhen Criminal Investigation Department (CID), the anti-fraud center handled a total of 75 scams in which fraudsters pretended to be employees of judicial departments in order to swindle Hong Kong residents and those commuting between the mainland and Hong Kong in the first five months of this year.

The number of cases, involving 68.62 million yuan (US$9.99 million), was six times the number of those in the same period last year. Two frauds involved funds of more than 10 million yuan and 12 cases involved more than 1 million yuan.

“Among the cases involving Hong Kong, 70 percent of the victims were those who commute between Shenzhen and Hong Kong and most of the fraudsters were from the Taiwan region,” said Wang Zhengtu, deputy chief of the 7th Brigade of the Shenzhen CID.

(Han Ximin)