Chinese police have arrested 101 suspects, including 25 Taiwanese from Cambodia, for their alleged role in transnational-telecom crimes involving USD 2.94 million, officials said on Friday. Of the suspects, 76 were from the mainland and 25 from Taiwan and they have been linked to 135 cases currently under investigation, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) said. The suspects were arrested in the crackdown since mid-June this year. Watch What Else Is Making News The fraudsters had targeted victims living in the eastern province of Zhejiang, and police across the province first began to receive complaints about telecom and Internet fraud in April this year, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. The subsequent investigations led to outfits based in Cambodia, where the suspects were allegedly swindling victims out of their money by pretending to be government or law enforcement officials. Chinese police captured 39 suspects, 14 from the mainland and 25 from Taiwan, in Cambodia, and seized the apparatus they had been using. Following the arrests and raids in Cambodia, and under the coordination of the MPS, police departments from seven provinces in China carried out multiple raids and arrested 62 suspects and dismantled three transnational fraud outfits. Around 590,000 telecom fraud cases were reported in 2015, involving the loss of 22.2 billion yuan. Taiwan has been protesting over the arrest of its national in the ongoing crackdown by China over the international telecom frauds. Officials from China, which claims Taiwan as part of the mainland, defend the action saying that the Taiwanese were involved in committing crimes against Chinese nationals.
