Joint effort foils telecom fraud

The Ministry of Public Security announced on Thursday that all major telecom fraud operations in northern Myanmar near China's border have been eradicated.

In a news release, the ministry said that law enforcement cooperation and joint actions between China and Myanmar have led to the arrest of over 53,000 Chinese suspects involved in related crimes, since a special operation to combat telecom fraud involving Chinese nationals in northern Myanmar was launched last year.

The ministry also disclosed details of a recent joint law enforcement operation in which 1,079 suspects involved in cross-border telecom fraud were apprehended in Tangyang, Myanmar, on Sunday.

Among them, 763 were Chinese nationals, all of whom have been handed over to Chinese authorities, it said. Sixty-nine of the 763 Chinese apprehended had been designated fugitives.

The news release noted that, deterred by the recent crackdown, fraudsters had been relocating to areas such as Wan Hai, Tangyang, and Myawaddy in Myanmar.

These fraudsters continued to recruit and lure Chinese citizens to illegally cross the border and participate in telecom fraud activities, leading to severe violent crimes such as illegal detention, intentional injury, kidnapping and even murder, posing significant threats to the safety of Chinese citizens, it said.

In response, the Ministry of Public Security directed police officers in Yunnan province to collaborate with relevant law enforcement departments in Myanmar to carry out a crackdown operation.

In addition, a large number of tools used in the crimes, including computers, mobile phones and fraud scripts, were also confiscated, according to the ministry.

The news release described the joint action as another "major breakthrough" in the ongoing operation against telecom fraud crimes involving Chinese citizens in northern Myanmar.

A ministry official was quoted in the release as saying that public security authorities will continue to maintain a "high-pressure crackdown" on cross-border telecom fraud crimes, especially those in "dens or clusters" such as Wan Hai, Tangyang and Myawaddy along Myanmar's border with China.

The official pledged to intensify efforts to strengthen law enforcement cooperation to resolutely eliminate the "cancer" of telecom and cyber fraud crimes involving Chinese nationals.

At the same time, public security authorities are urging the public not to easily trust "high-paying job offers" from overseas to avoid falling into criminal traps, and to effectively safeguard their own legal rights, according to the official.