A court in Beijing on Friday sentenced 46 Taiwanese, who were deported from Spain in 2016, to up to 13 years in jail for their alleged involvement in telecom fraud.
The accused were charged with defrauding Chinese citizens in two separate cases, according to a bulletin posted on the Sina Weibo account of the Beijing Municipal High People’s Court.
In one of the cases, seven Taiwanese, including one surnamed Lu (盧), were sentenced to 10 to 13 years for defrauding residents in China from October 2016 to December 2016, the court said.
Lu’s 28 accomplices were given sentences ranging from four-and-a-half years to eight years in prison, the court said.
The group allegedly posed as police officers, prosecutors, judges and other government officials to deceive their victims into transferring money to a designated account.
The fraud ring swindled 4.4 million yuan (US$674,753) from 66 people, the court said.
In another case, 11 Taiwanese, led by a person surnamed Tsai (蔡), were given jail terms of five years to 10 years for similar crimes committed during the same period, the court said.
They defrauded 10 people in China and Hong Kong out of 3.2 million yuan using similar tactics, the court said.
The bulletin said that the rights of the accused had been fully protected during the trials.
The 46 accused were part of 237 telecom fraud suspects (218 of whom are Taiwanese) arrested by authorities in Madrid and Barcelona in 2016. They were all deported to China, despite Taipei’s opposition.
Among the Taiwanese deportees, 29 were sentenced to jail terms ranging from four-and-a-half years to 14 years by a Beijing court late last year.
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