Man held over telephone scam
25/10/2008 13:35
Dong Hui/Shanghai Daily news
Baoshan District police
have detained a suspect for cheating money from the Shanghai Telecommunication
Co, police said yesterday.
Last month, Lu Li, 25, from Shandong Province,
allegedly rented a small room in Luodian in Baoshan district, bought a fake ID
card and applied for a telephone line from the telecom company.
Lu allegedly
installed an auto-dial router on the phone, which made the phone keep calling a
number in Africa.
China's telecommunication companies pay telephone fees in
advance to the owner of foreign numbers, and then pass the charges on to the
caller.
"The number Lu dialed is a sales and advertisement number," said
Zeng Ni, from Baoshan District police. "It will return 10 percent of the
telephone fee to the dialer.
"Lu used a fake ID, so the telecom company
couldn't charge him, and collected the 10 percent fee."
When the scheme
worked, Lu allegedly applied for another phone in the district's Luojing area.
His transnational telephone bill reached 120,000 yuan.
"Lu could get about
10,000 yuan a month through this," Zeng said.
Baoshan District police said
they got a report from a telecoms company on October 10 and detained the
suspect.
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