Police cracks racketeer gang on Sino-Vietnam border

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-05-15 23:36

NANNING -- Police in southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region cracked down on a crime ring that swindled at least 1,000 tourists, the municipal security bureau of Fangchenggang confirmed on Friday.

The local police have caught 30 major suspects from the ring, which was allegedly responsible for 57 cases racketeering and robbery from April to November last year.

The cases involved 6.19 million yuan (US$907,625) that was obtained through robbery, racketeering and blackmail, according to the local security bureau.

The suspected group is based in Dongxing, a border city under the jurisdiction of Fangchenggang, and was headed by two brothers, Huang Yongjiu and Huang Yonghua.

Between April and November last year, the group beguiled about 1,000 Chinese tourists by arranging "one-day tours on the Sino-Viet border" for them. The suspects enticed the tourists to visit Mang Cai of Vietnam through illegally crossing the border and colluded with some Vietnamese in the city to rob, blackmail or beguile them.

Usually the visitors were taken to a specific hotel in Mang Cai, and at the hotel, some Vietnamese swindled them by selling shoddy wrist watches, jade ware and pseudo gold jewels to them.

The visitors were also blackmailed by being told they crossed the border in an illegal way.

It took more than one year for the local police to detect the crime ring after they had received more than 50 reports and complaints from victims of such illegal "one-day tours" in 2007. Their investigations have been helped by their counterparts in Vietnam.

The police said that the crime ring began their illegal "one-day tours" in September 2005. However, it's difficult for them to find the exact number of the people who had since been swindled. They received better knowledge about cases that happened between April and November last year, when their investigations were being carried out.