BEIJING, July 27 (Xinhua) -- A total of 253 suspects were taken into custody by Chinese mainland and Taiwan police in a latest joint raid against phone fraud rings, said the Ministry of Public Security on Friday.

Among them, 105 are from the mainland and 148 from Taiwan, said a ministry statement.

Police in southeast China's Fujian and southern Guangdong and Hainan provinces and their Taiwan counterparts together raided 32 locations on Thursday morning, the statement said.

The criminal rings were found to have engaged in a new type of phone fraud mainly targeting online shoppers in Taiwan, it said.

Illegally obtaining customer information from online shopping websites, the suspects, disguised as website service staff, allegedly called customers telling them they needed to correct some mistakes by the banks concerning their payment and deceived them into transferring money into wrong bank accounts.

Mainland police started investigations shortly after Taiwan police informed them of such frauds in April and uncovered nine criminal rings mainly in Fujian, Guangdong and Hainan, the statement said. Enditem

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