Fake Hang Seng Index fraudsters nailed
The website with fake Hang Seng Index presented
Police raid the gang's office in Shenzhen city
Police take suspects to Shanghai.
A total of 78 suspects have been caught for allegedly defrauding people with a fake website of the Hong Kong stock market index Hang Seng, Shanghai police said on Thursday.
The victims lost over 20 million yuan (US$2.9 million) to the suspects, police said.
Police in Xuhui District started their investigation in May last year after a woman surnamed Lu reported that she invested about 3.6 million yuan in what she was told was the futures of the Hang Seng Index and ended up with only US$20,000 in her account.
Lu said she grew suspicious of the website on which she made the investment after finding out that it was not connected to Hong Kong stock exchanges at all.
She said she was introduced to the website in a WeChat group with people claiming to be making money on it.
Police confirmed that the website is a fraud after checking up with Shanghai’s securities watchdog, and found that a gang operated the fraud from Shenzhen City in Guangdong Province as a company.
Investors like Lu were all recruited on WeChat and were talked into making investment in WeChat groups with members of the gang pretending to be successful investors and stock market analysts, police said.
On the website, which was entirely rigged by the suspects, the investors usually made some money at the beginning and then plunged into loss.
The first 49 suspects were caught in Shenzhen in August last year, and the last ones had been caught by the end of May this year, police said.
Among the 78 suspects, 70 have been arrested with seven put on bail and one under detention at the moment.
