One of my techniques for keeping current on Cybercrime trends is having an “interesting” collection of international news ticklers. This story came to me via X:CyberScamMonitor via a QQ account called “onCambodia.” @CyberScamMonitor is a Twitter/X account and Substack account dedicated to tracking online scam and gambling operations in Southeast Asia and documenting human trafficking and human rights abuses. Great work and a strong recommendation to follow if you wish to learn more about the links between #CryptoScams and #PigButchering.
I apologize to the original journalist as I have been unable so far to find the original to give them full credit. For reference, the Chinese article I refer to provides the source as 来源：鲁中晨报 (Source: Luzhong Morning News). The headline is: “Chinese woman was arrested after returning to China! Uncovering the financial backers of a fraud syndicate in Sihanoukville.” If anyone has a link to the Luzhong Morning News version, please comment and I will update! This post is mostly just a retelling of their story in English!
The story told, in my opinion, should have the headline “Diligent Police Task Force won’t stop tracking Fraudsters!” This story features the Yiyuan County Police who started with a telecom fraud case in their jurisdiction and followed it until they had wrapped up the entire organization and seized 200 million yuan from the criminals, 1/4th of it in cash, but also in real estate, luxury cars, watches, and liquour. That’s over $28 Million USD! The case started with a local business who found that one of their employees had sent out 38 million yuan in just a few days. The employee was being extorted after installing a porn-dating app on his phone — when the criminals learned where he worked they demanded that he send money from his company as well.
The case was taken up by the “3.01” Task Force. Yiyuan County is administered as part of Zibo City in Shandong Province of China. Police officers from county, city, and provincial level work together on the 3.01 Task Force. (Shandong is in the east of China, across the Yellow Sea from South Korea.) The deputy magistrate of Yiyuan, Zhang Xiuguang (张秀光), takes an approach to cybercrime that reminds me of the work of the This article has been indexed from CyberCrime & Doing Time