75 nabbed for stealing accounts in east China province

NANJING -- A total of 75 suspects have been arrested for stealing accounts in East China's Jiangsu province, local police said on Monday.

Police in Xuzhou city discovered a phishing site on which several suspects were stealing accounts and passwords in early March.

A preliminary investigation showed that the suspects approached victims under the guise of giving away free game credits or equipment. They then sent them fake links and obtained their account IDs and passwords.

The stolen accounts were either resold or used to publish advertisements related to pornography, gambling and drug abuse, police said.

Further investigation surfaced more suspects and multiple operations were conducted as of May across 15 provinces, municipalities and regions including Fujian, Guangdong, Chongqing, Henan and Hebei.

A total of 75 suspects were detained and over 300 servers were seized.

More than a billion pieces of account information were discovered and the amount of money involved in the cases is estimated at millions of yuan.

Further investigation is underway.