Suspected telecom fraudsters are escorted from an aircraft by police at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, on April 30. Ninety-seven suspects, including 32 people from Taiwan, were repatriated from Malaysia under the escort of Chinese police. The suspects were allegedly involved in more than 100 international telecom frauds in more than 20 areas of the Chinese mainland. (Liang Xu / Xinhua)
Telephone scams are a growing problem in China, with even financial experts falling prey to sophisticated schemes. For some victims, though, the consequences are far more severe than a simple monetary loss.
Last month, Fan Yin-gui hanged himself in a residential building in Qin'an county, Gansu province. He left no suicide note, just a cryptic messages crawled in dust at the scene: "My death has nothing to do with my wife, it is about swindlers."
The day before Fan took his own life, the 44-year-old received a bogus phone call, supposedly from the police, which led him to transfer 230,000 yuan ($35,000) to a fake bank account set up under the name of the Supreme People's Procuratorate.
The money represented all of Fan's savings. The member of the logistics department at Xichuan Middle School in Qin'an had planned to use the funds to buy an apartment for his family.
According to his wife, Feng Xiangxiang, Fan was told he was being targeted by the police in connection with a money-laundering case and he was threatened with arrest if he refused to cooperate with the investigation.
"On May 9, after a 60-minute discussion on the phone, he left home with his ID card and a bank card. He ignored me when I asked him where he was headed," Feng said. "When he returned home the next morning, he told me he had been swindled out of all our savings."
Fan's death was one of a series of suicides linked with telecom frauds that have attracted national attention since the beginning of the year.
