Smartphone service provider steals customer identities, suspects caught
One of the suspects being questioned by police.
When some mobile phone number vendors offer to help customers who are unfamiliar with smartphone technology configure their phones, they must be aware of potential scams therein, Shanghai police warned on Tuesday.
Police in Jiading District solved a case recently in which vendors allegedly registered accounts on popular mobile apps with purchased mobile phone numbers without notifying their customers, who were often senior citizens, then profited from selling the account information to others.
Police began their investigation in July when they found a WeChat account that was involved in criminal activity.
The owner of the account was supposed to be a 58-year-old man surnamed Zhang who lives in Waigang Town. However, when Zhang was approached by the police, he claimed that he had no WeChat account.
Zhang said he purchased the number from a communications company in Jiangqiao Town in May in order to use an inexpensive phone plan. An employee from the company came to his home to help him activate the new number.
After an investigation into the company's activities, police found that its employees, when configuring phones for their customers, registered the new phone numbers with apps such as WeChat and Douyin (known as TikTok overseas) and later sold the accounts to other buyers.
The accounts were sold for 25 yuan (US$3.87) each to another group of suspects who then resold them for 80 to 145 yuan each, police said.
A total of 14 suspects were apprehended from two locations in Shanghai in late August and have confessed to their roles in the scheme.
Over 1,000 people fell victim to the scammers, police said.
The suspects could face charges of aiding criminal activity via the Internet.
