Society

China cracks down on 3,000 pyramid sales gangs

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-12-25 20:43
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BEIJING: China's Ministry of Public Security announced Friday it has cracked down on more than 3,000 gangs involved in pyramid sales schemes in a one-hundred-day-campaign ending October 20.

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The ministry cracked more than 2,200 pyramid sales cases, which involved a total amount of 7.1 billion yuan (US$1.04 billion), it said in a statement.

The ministry froze or retrieved more than 1.3 billion yuan and destroyed more than 20,000 pyramid sales dens. More than 2,000 key members involved in the pyramid sales schemes were handed over to prosecutors.

More than 1,700 cases, or more than 70 percent of the total, were cracked in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and provinces of Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan and Guangdong, according to the ministry.