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CID bust Chinese business scam
View(s):More than 100 Chinese fraudsters living in luxury Colombo houses arrested for blackmail and bank account hacking in China
By Damith Wickremasekara
A gang of some 100 Chinese nationals, men and women, have been conducting a large-scale scam from Sri Lanka, blackmailing and hacking into bank accounts of wealthy fellow Chinese, the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) has revealed.
 The suspects leave the Colombo Magistrates’ Court yesterday. Pix by Amila Gamage |
 The suspects leaving the CID office. Pic by Nilan Maligaspe |
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 The Sunday Times report on June 10 |
The fraudsters posed as Chinese police officers and operated from a network of 10 luxury houses rented in and around Colombo.
“They led highly secretive lives, hardly ever leaving their houses,” a CID officer involved in the investigation told the Sunday Times. “They would buy dry rations in bulk and most of the time stayed indoors. They wouldn’t even come out to air or dry their clothes.”
CID investigations started when the Chinese authorities sought Sri Lankas help to trace account hackers found to be operating from Colombo.
“The gang had hacked into the accounts of 24 businessmen in China and extracted funds running into millions of dollars,” the officer said. “When our investigations began, some of the gang members had already left the country, but we were able to get the information we were looking for.”
The gang had used high-speed internet connectivity, paying a private company Rs. 120,000 a month for internet services. The CID team identified houses in Kotte, Rajagiriya, Thalangama, Borella, Bambalapitiya and Kollupitiya that were being used by the gang.
Last week, on the night of Thursday the 20th, on a directive from the Inspector General of Police N. K. Ilangakoon, special police teams conducted a simultaneous search of all 10 houses. The CID seized 43 laptops, 100 mobile phones, printers and other telecommunication equipment.
Each house had one room that was equipped with walki-talkies, manual typewriters and voice recordings of police messages spoken in Chinese. These provided the typical background noise of a police station in mainland China. Any Chinese person receiving a call from one of these Colombo centres would believe these were authentic police calls originating in China.
Posing as officers of the Financial Investigations Unit of the Chinese Police, the gang members would say they were investigating businessmen with questionable sources of income. The callers would offer two options – they could either call over at a police station for questioning, or deposit a sum of money in a given account. Invariably, the businessmen chose the second option. Deposited monies would be withdrawn from accounts in Thailand.
There is no evidence that the gang had hacked into Sri Lankan accounts. The suspects have been remanded until January 7. In June, the CID arrested and deported 17 Chinese suspected of hacking into corporate databases and defrauding Chinese companies of more than US$2 million.
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