Our reporter Mao Xin
The number of bank cards involved in the case has dropped sharply from thousands to dozens per week; a bank card sold to a telecommunications network fraud (hereinafter referred to as "electric fraud") group has increased the price by nearly 10 times; card trafficking is like drug trafficking The same painstaking effort, such as hiding the card in a milk powder can and transporting it out of the country...
Since the Joint Office of the State Council deployed the "Broken Card" operation in October 2020, the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Bureau has acted quickly to combat, rectify, and punish a multi-pronged approach. There has been a clear turning point in crimes involving the "two cards", the total number of electronic frauds and the number of frauds. The absolute number of the "two cards" has dropped sharply, and the effectiveness of the crackdown has begun to show.
"Any case of electronic fraud is inseparable from the'two cards'." Bao Liangxiong, deputy director of the New Crime Research Center of the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department, said that "broken cards" means "seven inches" of such criminals. .
Buy a bank card for 300 yuan, then sell it for 3,000 yuan
"Two cards" is a broad term, which mainly includes communication mobile phone cards, Internet of Things cards, capital personal bank cards, corporate accounts and settlement cards, and non-bank payment institution accounts.
In September 2020, a bank branch located in Huangpu District, Guangzhou City had a large number of card openings, and there were cases of card openings in groups, which attracted the attention of the police.
After investigating the case, the police found a card-issuing gang operating in Huangpu District, Zengcheng District, Foshan and Dongguan.
The gang has specific levels such as superior card dealers, lower card dealers, "Kanon" (card issuers), and "Kanon" guards. Under the guise of recruiting part-time jobs, it has aggressively attracted some migrant workers who are weak in legal consciousness and urgently need money. Let them come to Guangzhou to apply for bank cards, and then buy them at low prices and sell them at high prices, specifically for criminal gangs to use for money laundering and other illegal activities.
On October 22, 2020, the Guangzhou police conducted a unified network closure operation and successfully eliminated the criminal gang, arresting a total of 30 suspects.
According to the suspect’s confession, the main criminal Wang bought a bank card from the card dealer Han at a price of 1,500 yuan.
Mr. Han uses niche communication software or Baidu Tieba, QQ group to post recruitment information, and recruits intermediary personnel on-site at Internet cafes. At a price ranging from 300 to 600 yuan, Han entices migrant workers to become "canons" and let them Open and provide bank card "four-piece" (bank card, USB shield and password, mobile phone card, ID card).
In order to ensure that the newly opened card can be used normally, the gang employs more than 10 people and temporarily takes care of "Cannon" in small hotels and small apartments, so that Wang, Han and others can conduct bank card online banking login and payment verification operations.
After the verification was successful, Wang, Han and others then sold the "four-piece set" and the mobile phone bound to Alipay to the superior card dealer for a set price of 3,000 yuan.
According to the requirements of higher-level card merchants, during the period when these bank cards and Alipay receive fraudulent money, the "cannon" needs to be kept in custody until the bank card or Alipay is used up.
“Using buying and selling accounts to transfer fraudulent funds has become an important method of current electronic fraud.” said Chen Weidong, Director of the Payment and Settlement Division of the People’s Bank of China Guangzhou Branch. In the above case, a bank card was purchased for 300 yuan and sold for more than 3,000 yuan when it was transferred. , Can be called huge profits.
Zhu Jiawei, director of the New-type Crime Research Center of the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department, said that the existence of "two cards" with real names and non-real persons greatly increases the difficulty of combating, and also breeds a black and gray industrial chain of "two cards" for buying, selling, renting and selling.
Xinhua Daily Telegraph reporter's investigation found that the trend of industrialization of "two card" illegal crimes has become increasingly obvious.
Take the mobile phone card as an example. The card issuing gang tried every means to apply for as many new cards as possible, waiting to be sold.
According to the requirements of the card collecting group, the leading group publishes acquisition information in various QQ groups and WeChat groups, and after trading with the card issuing group, the mobile card is collected and handed over to the card collecting group, which then sells it layer by layer to earn the difference.
More than 2,800 people involved in the case were banned from communication services
In September 2020, Guangdong took the lead in launching a special work on cracking down on the "two cards", and it was identified as a national pilot.
26 departments, including the public security organs, the People's Bank of China, and the Communications Administration, carried out joint crackdowns, rectifications and punishments.
As of January 6 this year, more than 1,500 criminal dens involving the "two cards" have been eliminated, 15,100 criminal suspects have been arrested, more than 2.32 million high-risk phone numbers have been investigated and shut down, and 5.3 million personal bank accounts at risk of fraud have been investigated and controlled. More than, publicly punished 2873 communication users with bad credit...
"Grasp the bank card problem, you can really hit the'seven inches' of these criminal gangs." Bao Liangxiong said.
Relying on the inter-department joint conference system, 26 departments have broken through barriers and exchanged data.
According to Bao Liangxiong, relevant data has been initially integrated.
In addition, the police and the bank have strengthened cooperation, and the bank will arrange a special person to be stationed in the public security organs to comprehensively sort out and investigate abnormal account opening clues and promote big data modeling.
At present, 5.8 million high-risk latent accounts have been discovered from existing bank accounts.
"These high-risk accounts involving the'two card' crimes have now been put under supervision and implemented measures such as only receiving or not paying, not receiving or paying, and stopping non-counter functions." Chen Weidong said.
It is worth mentioning that in the first round of attacks, more than 2,400 people in Guangdong were punished for untrustworthy behaviors such as selling and lending bank accounts and personal bank cards.
Within 5 years, these people can only use cash for consumption, cannot use mobile payment functions, register for Alipay accounts and open WeChat payment.
There are also more than 2,800 suspected criminals of electronic fraud and those who have registered with the real names of the numbers involved in the case are listed as bad-credit communication users for punishment, and all communication services such as mobile phone numbers and network cards under their names will be shut down first.
Some gang turned out the old cards more than ten years ago and used them
Guangdong has a high economic activity, a large population, and a large card-issuing base. It has always been a place with a high incidence of crimes involving the "two cards", and it is also one of the areas that are deeply affected by electronic fraud.
End dens, catching suspects, solving cases, and severely punishing... Since the launch of the "Card Broken" operation, Guangdong has seen a clear turning point in crimes involving the "two cards".
In December 2020, the total number of electric fraud police in Guangdong dropped by 11.77% year-on-year.
"This data shows that the four consecutive months of crackdown and governance have achieved initial results." Bao Liangxiong said.
Data from December 2020 also showed that the number of newly opened accounts in Guangdong has dropped from the first in the country to fifth in the country, and the number of bank cards involved in the case has dropped from thousands to dozens per week.
The absolute number of fraudulent “two cards” has dropped sharply, especially the number of newly opened bank cards has shrunk, directly leading to increased difficulty in card sales.
Some cases show that after the market shrinks, some gangs have used all the old cards more than ten years ago.
The price of bank card terminals has also begun to rise sharply.
The latest data shows that a bank card is now in the money laundering link, and the price has doubled to tens of thousands of yuan.
"The rise in the price of bank card terminals is also a good proof of the effectiveness of the crackdown." Chen Weidong said.
While the "broken card" operation has achieved practical results, criminals are also waiting for opportunities to respond.
The first is to shorten the card money laundering process and change the card method.
The bank card involved in the case has evolved from the previous model of "issuing-receiving-card-sending-money laundering" into forms such as use and discard, and transfer of funds to the custodian. Money laundering with stock of old cards and the transformation of money laundering in the form of trade hedging; from the original use of bank card transfers, gradually turning to credit card transfers and money laundering.
In addition, in order to avoid the crackdown, a large number of fraud gangs in the country have flown to Southeast Asia to commit crimes.
At the same time, some local drug-related and gambling-related criminal groups also have a tendency to "abandon drugs, abandon gambling, and defraud." Therefore, a large number of bank cards are still needed for money laundering. These cards are all trafficked from within the country through a variety of methods.
"Sometimes a card has to be sent to the border, the method is as concealed as drug trafficking. Some are put in milk powder cans, and some are hidden and smuggled." Bao Liangxiong said.
The difficulty of inventory card management may be highlighted
Although Guangdong has achieved initial results in cracking down on the "two cards", the overall situation is still grim, and it is urgent to come up with practical measures to deal with it.
The form of electric fraud crime is relatively complicated, involving many links such as capital chain and information flow, and it is difficult to obtain evidence and trace the source.
Some existing laws cannot well solve the difficulties encountered in handling such cases, making subsequent judicial processing difficult.
It is expected that the legislature will speed up the update of laws and regulations based on the actual situation, or promptly issue judicial interpretations and publish guiding judicial precedents.
Some regulatory links still have the problem of insufficient implementation of responsibilities.
For example, the main business of public security organs is to fight crime, but due to the impact of the objective situation, they are now devoting great efforts to the management of industry chaos.
Bao Liangxiong said that, especially with regard to the phone cards involved, there are still problems such as chaotic channel management of social agents, remote illegal issuance of cards, and a large number of real-name cards and IoT cards that are used in crimes.
The reporter learned that taking Guangzhou Mobile as an example, there were 9 million new accounts opened in 2018, 6 million new accounts opened in 2019, and 4 million new accounts opened in 2020.
Although it is declining, Guangzhou's new floating population is only about 400,000 every year. Where can so many new accounts be opened?
Over time, there may be fewer and fewer new cards, but the management of existing cards is still a problem.