More than 70 suspected scam merchants have been detained in two separate cases that ensnared at least 11 local citizens, city police said yesterday.
Forty-eight of the suspects were allegedly involved in an Internet scam where victims were hooked up over social networks to gamble at illegal gambling websites and lost more than 50 million yuan ($7.5 million).
A man surnamed Lin who lives in Fengxian District was one of the victims. He allegedly accepted a friend request last month from someone who sported an avatar of a beautiful girl on QQ, a popular instant messaging software service in China. He was then persuaded to invest more than 70,000 yuan in online gambling.
Lin thought he was gambling at a lottery called "Shishicai," run in China's southwestern city Chongqing, but police said no lottery of that name had any official online betting portal.
The head of the suspected gang, a man surnamed Teng, is still being hunted.
Meanwhile, 28 suspected con artists, based in Beijing, were caught after running a telephone scam that targeted senior citizens.
Members of the gang have allegedly made more than 300,000 calls since May, claiming to be public servants in Beijing and enticing victims to pay more than 10,000 yuan for alleged government allowances and discounts for medicines.
A woman surnamed Zhu who lives in Pudong told police that she and her husband were persuaded to pay 12,000 yuan, but the promised benefits were never delivered.
Police said the gang had made at least 1.3 million yuan from the scam.
