Teacher, students arrested for Internet fraud

A computer teacher and five students were arrested on suspicion of Internet fraud in Guizhou province, the website of China National Radio reported on Oct 24.

Cnr.cn said that a resident of Anshun, Guizhou province, identified only as Liu, called police on March 10 after being swindled out of almost 50,000 yuan ($8,220).

According to the report, the victim wanted to purchase online-game currency that was sold by a customer service worker identified as “Xiao Li”. Liu remitted the money but never received the game currency, the report said.

After a monthlong investigation, local police believed that the suspects were in Guiyang and Guiding of Guizhou province. On April 11, police arrested six people suspected of being involved in the case. Police also confiscated tools used in the alleged fraud, including 10 computers, more than 30 bank cards and several USB flash drives, the report said.

Police said the Internet-fraud group is headed by a college computer teacher, identified only as Zhang. The five group members are Zhang's students, police said.

Zhang and the students used their computer knowledge to set up false online trading platforms and then pretended to be selling inexpensive online gaming products such as game currency to lure game players, the local police told cnr.cn.

The group swindled about 1 million yuan out of more than 800 game players across the country, the report said.