3-year campaign against organized crime nets 17,000 suspects

Public security officers nationwide have busted 1,759 criminal gangs using information networks to commit crimes and arrested 17,000 suspects amid a three-year campaign against organized crime, the Ministry of Public Security said on Thursday.

They also have solved 32,000 criminal cases committed on information networks, such as the internet and the telephone system, and confiscated 29.95 billion yuan ($4.58 billion) of assets involved.

With the help of information networks, criminals make profits by means such as fabricating false information, extorting, defaming, threatening and lending at excessive interest rates, said Zhang Ming, the ministry's spokeswoman.

Zhang said such crimes have seriously disrupted economic and social order. Due to the crimes, some students drop out of school, some businesses close down and some people even committed suicide in disgrace.

Liu Zhongyi, director of the ministry's Criminal Investigation Bureau, said that unlike traditional organized crimes with a fixed organization or often by using physical violence, people who commit crimes on information networks are younger, with looser organizational structure and a more refined division of labor.

The criminals were concentrated in age ranging from 20 to 35, and gang members can communicate through information networks using virtual identities for a short time and form criminal gangs. Different links to the criminal process are implemented by different personnel or other professional groups, Liu said.

"They can harm victims who are thousands of miles away without leaving home, causing more harmful consequences, even more than traditional organized crimes," he added.

The ministry also deployed the public security force to severely crack down on seven types of such crimes, including lending scams, maliciously making compensation claims, blackmail by threatening people with nude video clips, and online trolls maliciously hyping a particular event.

The ministry also has strengthened cooperation with the Ministry of Education, Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission and third-party internet enterprises. It also has established a national monitoring and warning platform for cases suspected of false lending and a system for linking blackmail cases with posts of nude video clips, based on big data.

Up to now, the platforms have filed 137,900 collaborative tasks. The number of suspected online false lending operators has dropped 86 percent from its peak in 2019, and the number of blackmail cases involving threats to post nude video clips has been on a continuous decline since June.