Chinese police in the last three months have broken up nearly 280 gangs and seized 1,469 suspects who used telephones to scam or defraud people, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) said Monday.

Nearly 4,800 cases have been solved by the police and more than 19 million yuan (about 2.8 million U.S. dollars) recovered since the ministry launched a special four-month crackdown on telecommunications fraud on June 12.

The crackdown is part of an MPS campaign to maintain social stability for China's National Day celebrations, ministry spokesman Wu Heping said Monday. This year the celebrations mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

Wu said telephone swindles had been on the rise before the MPS started the campaign. Suspects usually called the victims on the phone and pretended to be their superiors, long-lost friends, even Mafia members before asking the victims to forward money to their bank accounts.

The eastern province of Jiangsu reported nearly 600 such cases in a month at the beginning of this year, Wu said, but because of the crackdown the province had only reported 10 cases in August.

But Huang Zuyue, a vice director in charge of criminal investigations with the MPS, warned swindlers might now begin to operate in central and western parts of China as well as from outside the country.

The MPS would work with police from other countries to crack down on cross-border cases, he said.

He asked members of the public, especially the elderly and middle-aged who account for 70 percent of the victims, to be on guard against telephone swindles, as they were becoming more organized and sophisticated.

(Xinhua News Agency August 31, 2009)