The personal touch helps police frustrate fraudsters

As telecom swindlers adopt new tactics, the city's police are launching new measures to crack down on their scams.

Since August 15 local police officers have begun visiting the homes of potential victims in the wake of the city’s telecommunications and online fraud squad spotting potential scams via real-time data analysis.

The new mechanism is credited with successfully stopping 1,094 potential scam cases.

By coming directly to the homes of people targeted by the fraudsters, at least one in five of the potential victims has been saved from losing their money, said detective Fan Hua.

The door-to-door visits came after police found that alert calls warning potential victims about scams were often proving ineffective as the swindlers applied new methods to fool their targets.

Fan said that despite being phoned by police and warned that they were being conned, people continued to transfer money to the swindlers after hanging up on the police call "because the swindlers warned them in advance that they would receive so-called alert calls from ‘fake police’."

Another officer, Huang Yi, said "the swindlers were 'brainwashing’ the victims over the phone, and what our officers need to do is to wake them up.”

In July and August, the city’s police caught more than 1,000 telecom fraud cases, made more than 21,000 alert calls and stopped about 16,000 potential victims from transferring money to swindlers.

The police also froze 112 suspected bank accounts, involving more than 15 million yuan (US$2.26 million). A total of 184 phone numbers suspected of being used in scams were suspended and 117 website links were blocked.