MANILA: Philippine police said they arrested more than 350 people on Thursday
involved in a major telephone scam that swindled people out of millions of
dollars in Taiwan and mainland China.
At least 357 suspects, believed
to be mostly from Taiwan and China, were arrested after simultaneous raids on
20 houses across Manila, said Senior Superintendent Ranier Idio, deputy chief
of an anti-organised crime task force.
"This is a big syndicate.
They go for the millions (of dollars)," he told reporters.
The gang would pose as police and
government prosecutors, telling their victims by telephone that they had legal
problems and they would have to transfer money to a certain account to settle
the matter, said Idio.
He said the group would carefully
check their intended victims' background to make sure they could pay up before
they struck.
They chose to operate in the
Philippines to avoid Chinese police and because of the country's proximity to
China and Taiwan, according to Idio.
Police said many of their victims
were elderly retirees.
Numerous computers and telephone
systems were recovered in the raid, Idio added.
The arrested suspects included
both men and women but it was difficult to get further details out of them as
they declined to answer most questions, said Senior Inspector Robert Reyes, one
of the investigators.
"Mostly, they are not
cooperative. We don't know if they can't speak English or if they just don't
want to talk," he told AFP.
Envoys from mainland China and
Taiwan were at the police centre, determining where the suspects had originated
from, police said.
The syndicate, operating in
cells, would bring their gang members to the Philippines in small groups and
put them up in rented houses in upscale neighbourhoods to avoid raising
suspicion, police said.
Two Filipinos who facilitated the
entry of the foreigners were also arrested.
Reyes said police suspected the
group was linked to 78 Taiwanese suspects who were arrested in the southern
Philippines in April, also for using telephone systems to obtain money from
mainland China and Taiwan.
The Taiwanese were later deported
to face charges at home, authorities said.
The latest suspects could be
charged with a law penalising the use of telecom systems to commit fraud, Reyes
said. If convicted, they could face six to 20 years in jail.
- AFP/de
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