China strengthens ties to SE Asia and Europe in telecom fraud battle

China will strengthen intelligence sharing and cooperation with some Southeast Asian and European countries to fight cross-border telecom fraud, the Ministry of Public Security said on Sunday.

The countries are the major destinations for criminals seeking to establish wire fraud terminals, set up operations and conduct their crimes, the ministry said.

"We will beef up law enforcement cooperation with our counterparts in relevant countries to target some major and individual cases, to protect people's property rights and legitimate rights," Lou Xiandi, a senior official at the ministry's criminal investigation bureau, said.

Lou cited the example of a recent collaborative effort with Spanish authorities involving a large number of Taiwan people who allegedly ran fraud operations from the European country. Their victims were from the Chinese mainland, drawing public and media attention to the cases.

On Friday, 94 suspects from Taiwan were extradited to the mainland from Spain as part of the crackdown. To date, 225 suspects have been extradited from Spain to face justice. Of those, 218 were from Taiwan.

Another 12 suspects are still waiting to be extradited from Spain to face trial, Lou said.

"Once the judicial procedure in Spain is complete, we will send working teams to Spain and escort them back to face justice," he said.

The crackdown started in 2016, when China and Spain launched operation Changcheng, which means Great Wall, to combat transnational telecom fraud.

In July 2016, Chinese police traveled to Spain and after a five-month joint investigation, police discovered the Taiwan suspects had set up many criminal operations in villas and hired gang members to target victims on the Chinese mainland.

Lou said the suspects usually pretended to be judicial officers, bank staff and employees of financial supervisory authorities in order to dupe the victims.

"The fraudsters cheated the victims by claiming their personal information had been leaked or that their credit cards or bank accounts had been stolen, or they threatened people with accusations of money laundering or drug trafficking," Lou said.

"The victims believed them and thought their bank accounts were unsafe, so they transferred their money to a designated 'safe' account, offered by the suspect."

In December 2016, 800 police officers, including 100 from China, conducted joint arrests in Spain to capture the 237 suspects. The police dismantled 13 fraud centers and confiscated equipment used to conduct crimes valued at 120 million yuan ($17.34 million), he said.

In 2017, China requested that Spain extradite the alleged swindlers. After a two-year judicial procedure in Spain, the Spanish court ordered that all the suspects be extradited to China.

"The judicial cooperation between China and Spain has achieved great success and it has been the first time hundreds of swindlers were extradited back from Europe," Lou said.