This is a shocking set of data:

In the past 10 years, telecom fraud cases in my country have grown rapidly at a rate of 20%-30% every year. In 2015, public security agencies across the country filed 590,000 telecom fraud cases, a year-on-year increase of 32.5%, causing economic losses of 22.2 billion yuan. From January to July this year, there were 355,000 telecom fraud cases across the country, a year-on-year increase of 36.4%, causing losses of 11.42 billion yuan.

Since 2013, there have been 104 telecom fraud cases involving more than 10 million yuan, and 2,392 cases involving more than one million yuan. Many people have been defrauded of their "pension money" and "life-saving money" and have lost their entire fortune and family members. Some companies have been defrauded of their funds and have gone bankrupt, triggering mass incidents.

Although relevant departments have continuously stepped up their crackdowns in recent years, telecommunications fraud crimes have continued to become more and more serious, becoming a social nuisance and deeply abhorred by the people. How can this social cancer be eradicated?

How hundreds of millions of dollars were defrauded through the air

In December 2015, the Construction Bureau of Duyun Economic Development Zone in Guizhou Province was defrauded of 117 million yuan by criminals pretending to be the Shanghai Municipal Procuratorate (the case has been solved); in January 2016, Xiong Junzhi, a villager in Zhoukou City, Henan Province, was defrauded of 8,000 yuan by criminals in the name of deducting annual fees from his bank card and then hanged himself (the case has been solved)... What kind of fraud tricks are hidden behind the repeated successes of telecom fraudsters?

According to the Criminal Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, telecommunications network fraud is a non-contact crime. The victim is usually deceived by receiving a phone call or message. On one end of the phone is the victim, on the other end is a well-organized and well-divided fraud criminal gang.

Jian, a native of Taoyuan, Taiwan, was one of the 77 telecommunications fraud suspects escorted back from Kenya by the mainland public security organs in April this year. The criminal gang he belongs to has set up its telephone service base in faraway Africa and specializes in defrauding people on the mainland.

"We are divided into the first line, the second line and the third line." Jian confessed. They call themselves "the company". The boss and key members are all Taiwanese, with a strict organization and clear division of labor. Front-line personnel pretend to be post offices, express companies, telecommunications companies, etc.; second-line personnel pretend to be public security police; third-line personnel pretend to be prosecutors or people from the financial department; there are also personnel responsible for recruiting fraudsters, technical maintenance, and obtaining victims' personal information.

The police handling the case said that the fraudsters contacted the victim through a changed phone number on the Internet, which was displayed as the phone number of a mainland government department or public prosecutor’s office. Once the victim is tricked into transferring funds to a designated bank account, the money owner (the boss of the gang) directs Taiwan's "water room" (transfer den) to decompose the funds into several accounts in a pyramid-like manner through online banking, and organizes a number of Taiwanese "riders" (withdrawers) to make crazy withdrawals in Taiwan. After receiving the stolen money, the sponsor will pay "salaries" to telephone dens, "water rooms", "drivers", etc. according to the agreed proportion.

"Taiwan's "Shui Fang" has a dedicated person responsible for liaising with mainland bank card selling gangs and purchasing mainland bank cards through express delivery. Taiwan's financial backers and "Shui Fang" 'drivers'’ There is a long-term cooperative relationship, and the sponsor will regularly provide bank accounts to the call center. "The policeman handling the case told reporters.

Compared with telecom fraud cases committed by criminals abroad, the perpetrators of domestic telecom fraud cases are mostly individuals or small workshops. In some places, regional professional criminal groups are formed based on relatives and fellow villagers. In addition to using the Internet and telephone to defraud, they also use Trojan viruses to remotely steal the victim's address book, bind bank accounts with mobile phones, intercept SMS verification codes, etc., and then carry out fraud by impersonating acquaintances, tax refund fraud, lottery winning fraud, etc.; once successful, they quickly cash out and launder money through online banking transfers, third-party payment platforms, gambling websites, and purchase of online game point card equipment.

Data from the Ministry of Public Security show that overseas telecommunications fraud crimes are mainly organized by Taiwanese, accounting for 20% of the total number of mainland telecommunications fraud cases and 50% of the losses. Major cases worth more than 10 million yuan are basically carried out by Taiwanese telecommunications fraud groups.

The incidence of crimes in recent years also shows that in order to increase deception, criminals follow social hot spots and carefully design deception "scripts" tailored to different groups, ranging from "guess who I am" and "you have a court summons" to student loans, military recruitment, etc. As the leakage of citizens' personal information becomes increasingly serious, criminals have gradually developed from "casting the net all over the sky" and looking for fraud targets in an undirected manner to "precision fraud" to obtain the victim's identity information.

Why telecommunications fraud is getting more and more serious

Statistics show that currently telecommunications fraud crimes have invaded 31 provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities and Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, with victims covering all ages and occupations.

Chen Zongqing, captain of the First Team of the Criminal Investigation Detachment of the Quanzhou City Public Security Bureau in Fujian Province, has been fighting on the front line against telecommunications fraud for more than 15 years. “Since the emergence of telecommunications fraud in mainland China, the public security organs have maintained a severe crackdown, but it is difficult for one company to effectively deal with this problem. ”

“This type of crime is low-cost, highly profitable, and easy to copy. Anyone who is a phone or Internet user may become a potential victim, and the profits from crime are huge. Therefore, criminals are increasingly committing fraud. " said Dong Bangjun, a professor at the School of Criminal Justice, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law.

Dong Bangjun believes that in the "Internet +" era, the convenience of telecommunications fraud has greatly improved. For example, with the emergence and popularization of Internet telephony, criminals can use account-changing software to disguise themselves as state agencies, or disguise themselves as banks and use the telephone banking password verification mechanism to defraud victims of their bank passwords to commit crimes. Obtaining basic information of victims and obtaining blank bank cards can be completed through the Internet. Illegal gains from fraud are mostly transferred through online banking and other channels, and are laundered through Internet finance and other channels.

A large number of cases show that there are management loopholes in relevant industry supervision and network management and control, giving room for telecom fraud to spread crazily.

——In the communications industry, there are currently a large number of overseas network renamed calls entering thousands of households. The problem of registered names rather than real names for mobile phone, broadband, Internet cards and other telecommunications services is still serious. The management of the virtual operator industry is chaotic, and problems such as illegal card issuance and arbitrary modification of the ownership of displayed numbers are prominent.

For example, the Tsinghua University professor who has attracted attention recentlyIn the case of being defrauded out of 17.6 million yuan, the victim received a phone number that was listed as Beijing. In fact, the criminal accessed the phone number from an overseas base using a "trunk service" sold by an agent of Beijing Telecom.

"The smooth implementation of renumbering calls in China is largely due to the fact that telecom operators rented out servers and trunk line services layer by layer in order to pursue profits, and did not intercept or filter overseas renumbering calls." Guo Jianhua, deputy head of the Serious Case Detachment of the Criminal Investigation Corps of the Hunan Provincial Public Security Department, told reporters.

——In the financial industry, a large number of non-real-name bank cards are used by criminals to transfer money and withdraw cash. There are no restrictions on online banking transfer amounts and login IPs, which are widely used by fraud groups. Bank card security protection has hidden dangers and can easily be copied and stolen by criminals. Some third-party payment companies do not implement the real-name system, and criminals can apply for POS machines by providing false information.

In 2014, a single telecom fraud case occurred in Xiamen, Fujian, with a total amount of more than 15.44 million yuan defrauded. After investigation, it was found that the fraudsters used more than 1,300 bank accounts to transfer and withdraw cash, and none of them were real-name bank cards.

——In terms of network security, criminals can easily invade official websites such as education, medical, and vehicle management, steal large amounts of personal information and sell it to fraud gangs, providing conditions for "precision fraud"; Trojan viruses, phishing websites, etc. can easily steal depositors' bank accounts and password information, and even remotely control accounts.

In August this year, Xu Yuyu, a female student in Linyi City, Shandong Province, died suddenly after being defrauded of 9,900 yuan by criminal suspects on the pretext of granting scholarships. It was found that the criminal suspect attacked the "Shandong Province 2016 College Entrance Examination Online Registration Information System" and implanted a Trojan virus into the website to obtain backend login permissions, thereby stealing a large number of candidates' registration information, including Xu Yuyu.

——The huge gray industry group has also become an accomplice of telecommunications fraud. Some criminals are engaged in gray industries such as stealing and selling citizens' personal information, setting up and selling bank cards, using "pseudo base stations" to send information, providing communication lines, professional transfers and withdrawals, professional money laundering, developing network account changing software, and making Trojan horse programs. They have made profits from cooperation with telecom fraud criminals, and many have established relatively fixed cooperative relationships to form criminal networks.

"While finance, communications, Internet and other industries are developing rapidly, security management has been neglected. Many security loopholes have appeared, allowing scammers to take advantage of them and commit crimes. What is behind this is the difficulty of lagging social management." Dong Bangjun said.

What is the best way to eradicate the cancer of evil

In the face of such rampant telecommunications fraud crimes, is there any response plan?

The answer is yes.

Also speaking from a case, on September 2 this year, 71-year-old Mr. Xiang came to a bank branch in Shanghai and prepared to transfer 600,000 cash to a safe account provided by the "police". Police from the Jing'an Branch of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau arrived in time: "You received a telecom fraud call, don't fall for it!"

The public security organs were able to promptly learn that the victim was about to be deceived and successfully dissuade them, thanks to the Shanghai Anti-Telecommunications Network Fraud Center platform that was launched in March this year. Platform by cityThe Public Security Bureau took the lead, and sent personnel from commercial banks, communications operators, third-party payment institutions and Internet security companies to implement integrated prevention, crackdown, and governance operations. So far, more than 2,800 phone numbers involved in the case have been shut down, 988 harmful websites involved in the case have been blocked, more than 79 million yuan in funds involved have been frozen, and more than 35,000 people have been successfully dissuaded.

More innovative explorations in various places are continuing to show results. In Beijing, since the police and banks cooperated to establish an information platform to combat and prevent telecom network fraud in the second half of 2015, as of mid-May this year, more than 350,000 bank accounts nationwide have been intercepted, and more than 1 billion yuan of funds involved have been intercepted, and the defrauded people have been successively returned.

In Xiamen, Fujian, anti-telecom fraud is regarded as a party and government project. An anti-fraud center has been established with the participation of public security, banks, communication operators and other departments, which has greatly improved the efficiency of prevention and crackdown. Since July 2015, emergency payment suspensions have been implemented on 9,703 telecommunications fraud cases, with the amount of payment suspension reaching 46.89 million yuan.

At the national level, a larger collaboration pattern is being established and improved - in June 2015, the State Council established an inter-ministerial joint conference system for combating new crimes in telecommunications networks, led by the Ministry of Public Security and participated by 23 departments and units, to jointly respond to the severe situation of telecommunications network fraud crimes.

“Telecom fraud crimes must be supported by the ‘three flows’, namely ‘information flow’, ‘capital flow’ and ‘personnel flow’.” Chen Shiqu, deputy inspector of the Criminal Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, said that the key to preventing and cracking down on telecom fraud is to change the traditional case handling model. Public security, banks, operators and other relevant departments should work together to control the “information flow” and “capital flow” from the source to minimize the space for crime to breed and spread.

Some advanced technological means are also being put into use. At present, Internet companies have joined hands with the public security department to promote the "Kilin" system based on massive big data and machine learning methods across the country, effectively curbing "fake base station" information fraud and cutting off the "information flow" of fraud crimes from the source.

In addition to strengthening departmental cooperation and industry supervision, many experts also suggested strengthening legal weapons and further increasing deterrence and punishment.

First, from the perspective of criminal legislation, telecom fraud should be independently criminalized with reference to financial fraud, insurance fraud and other models, and reasonable criminal elements and appropriate punishments should be designed to ensure that the culpability and punishment are appropriate. The second is to issue corresponding electronic evidence-related rules as soon as possible to standardize investigation and evidence-raising activities. The third is to clarify the standards for conviction and sentencing of telecommunications fraud through judicial interpretations, case guidance, etc., and eliminate the ambiguity in the application of the law and the phenomenon of different convictions for the same case. The fourth is to legislate and regulate the technological means used in telecommunications fraud and related telecommunications and financial industries, and clarify and strictly implement the responsibilities of financial, telecommunications and other regulatory agencies and specific operating agencies. The fifth is to remove various legal obstacles and implement systems such as the real-name system for telecommunications, the real-name system for financial accounts, the access system for telecommunications equipment and the financial industry, and curb telecommunications fraud crimes from the source.

“Telecom fraud is a typical cross-regional crime, which determines that its prevention and crackdown must be based on multi-party collaboration, including cross-border collaboration and domestic collaboration." Dong Bangjun said, especially in terms of cross-border collaboration, we should actively build a cooperation model within the legal framework through international consultations and signing relevant legal documents, and give full play to the role of international organizations such as Interpol and relevant basic agreements, and comprehensively use a variety of methods and means to carry out cross-border joint crackdowns to form an encirclement and suppression trend against telecommunications fraud.