POLICE in Changning City, Central China’s Hunan Province, cracked down on a criminal gang targeting overseas internet users with phone and online scams, China Daily reported yesterday.

The seven members of the gang, led by a 30-year-old man surnamed Zhou, won the trust of victims through romantic relationships before tricking them into gambling or financing schemes or asked for money directly.

The police in Changning spotted the criminal gang after a thorough and careful investigative work and identified its location in Guangzhou’s Panyu District.

Seven members of the gang were captured while they were committing fraud at their criminal den when the police took action June 27. Criminal evidence was confiscated, including 10 computers, 74 mobile phones and over 100 overseas SIM cards.

The police found that all the conversations stored in the computers and mobile phones were in English.

The suspects pretended to be from India or the Middle East by changing their social media accounts and communicated with victims through common translation software, inducing the victims to invest in a fraudulent scheme.

All the seven suspects have been placed under criminal detention and the process of the case is ongoing.

Similar phone and online fraud cases have been solved by police in multiple places in Southwest China’s Sichuan, and Central China’s Hunan and Hubei provinces.

Local police captured the five members of a criminal gang in Hubei’s Danjiangkou City on June 13. A suspect surnamed Pan told the police that they could not successfully commit the crime even once because of their poor English since the gang was formed one month ago.(China Daily)