China Watch Blog

China Watch Blog has learnt that Thai police have arrested three Nigerian men and a Thai woman for allegedly operating an online relationships scam and swindling eight million baht from 18 women.

The Bangkok Post reported that police arrested the suspects on outstanding warrants issued by Chiang Mai Provincial Court at an apartment in Ramkhamhaeng Soi 8 in Bangkok’s Bang Kapi district on Monday.

They seized four ATM cards, a mobile phone and a notebook containing the names of more than 100 women.

Those arrested were identified as Shinonsu Esaeokae, Chidi Enva, Pios Ennajee, and 32-year-old Thai woman Aunchittha Prasertsri, Pol Lt Gen Panu Kerdlarppol, head of the Immigration Police Bureau, told a press briefing on Tuesday.

The Nigerians would pose as wealthy people, using photos of good-looking US and European men when communicating with their targets through chat programmes and social networking websites including Facebook, Pol Lt Gen Panu said.

They web-chatted with the women for between one month and one year to convince them they loved them.

The conmen then told the victims that they had shipped valuables to them as gifts and showed them photos of the alleged expensive goods and fake invoices. In some cases, the gang claimed to have bought a house or a car for the woman.

When the shipment failed to arrive on time as promised, Mrs Aunchitta, who posed as an embassy official, would contact the victims and tell them they had to pay customs duty on the deliveries in order to receive them.

If the victims believed them, the conmen would ask the women to transfer money to them.

The internet fraud gang was believed to have 70 members and the gang’s leader was in Malaysia, Pol Lt Gen Panu said.Police investigations were continuing.

China Watch Blog reports that China had 1.06 billion mobile phone accounts as of July, of which 183.8 million subscribed to 3G network services, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said.

From January to July, the country added 75.8 million mobile phone users. Seven out of every 10 newly added cell phone users were 3G subscribers.

The number of fixed-line telephone users dropped by 1.91 million in the same period.

China Mobile Ltd, the nation’s biggest telecom carrier, had 688 million mobile subscribers by July, of which 69 million were 3G users.

China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd had 60.6 million 3G users as of July, with a total mobile user base of 222 million. China Telecom Corp Ltd said it had 146.9 million mobile phone subscribers and 53.8 million 3G users.

China Watch Blog has learnt that China’s mobile Internet market added 21 percent in the first quarter from the same period last year to 30.6 billion yuan (US$4.9 billion), an industry report said.

The number of mobile Internet users increased 5.1 percent from that of a year ago to 450 million due to the rising popularity of smart phones and tablet computers, research house Analysys International was quoted as saying in a report in a Shanghai Daily report.

Mobile shopping has boomed this year with a transaction volume of 10.8 billion yuan in the first three months, more than the total of 10.5 billion yuan for all of 2011 as online vendors rushed to appeal to smart phone users.