WHEN eight Singaporeans were told via telephone calls from China that they had won handsome cash prizes in a lottery and had to remit money in order to get their prizes, they fell for it.

They believed it so much that they jointly sent almost $85,000 in 'administrative fees' to a Taiwan bank account.

When no prize money arrived, they realised they had been tricked and went to the police.

On Tuesday, five members of the Taiwanese syndicate behind this phone scam were caught in a joint operation between the Singapore Police Force's Commercial Affairs Department and their Taiwanese counterparts.

The syndicate, helmed by a man named Hu, ran an operation under the name Hong Kong China Trust Group.

The Taiwanese authorities said the syndicate hired Chinese nationals to make calls from China to residents here to tell them about their 'prize' of about HK$60,000 (S$11,850).

The catch was that they had to remit administrative fees to a bank account in Taiwan to claim their prize.

Money sent to this account would then be withdrawn by the syndicate, which sent 90 per cent of it to the ring's headquarters in China through an underground money laundering channel.

The remaining 10 per cent of the money was retained by the Taiwanese group for its own use.

The Singapore police would not say how long their Taiwanese counterparts had been working on the case, or whether the ringleader Hu was among those arrested.

But the police here disclosed that they had given information to their Taiwanese counterparts earlier this year.

Phone scams have been on the rise here - almost 603 victims have fallen victim to these fraudsters from January last year to June this year, siphoning almost $9 million.

This story was first published in The Straits Times on 22 November 2008.

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