Six people disguised as stock brokers and financial regulators were recently indicted by Futian District People's Procuratorate for allegedly swindling more than 800,000 yuan (US$) over the past four months from four private stock investors, the Shenzhen Economic Daily reported yesterday.

Wang Hua, Wang Dong, Tan Kui, Xiang Qun and two women only identified by their surnames Lin and Luo, were arrested in a building on Jiantian Road in Futian District on Dec. 11, 2006. The group had allegedly stolen personal information from four investors who suffered economic losses during past trading on the stock market from three stock brokerages. Lin and Luo then pretended to be employees at China Securities Regulatory Commission's Shenzhen office to conduct regular random inspections while the other four men disguised themselves as top brokers at some of Shenzhen's stock brokerages promising to help them retrieve their losses from stock market, the newspaper said.

On Sept. 26, Luo, allegedly identifying herself as an analyst at a local securities company, called a woman surnamed He and said the company's general manager had launched a confidential workshop to help their clients retrieve the stock losses, according to the procuratorate. The woman had lost more than 50,000 yuan in stock trading through the company in late 2005 and she trusted Luo. Under Luo's instruction, He transferred 100,000 yuan into a China Construction Bank account under the name of Wang Dong, who claimed to be the company manager.

He received a phone call from Wang after the money transfer, and was told to deposit an additional 50,000 yuan into the same account. Wang explained that the 50,000 yuan was deposit for the use of the company's stock trading terminal and was refundable. He then transferred the amount into Wang's account.

However, He couldn't reach either Luo or Wang after the transaction, and never received the stock trading terminal Wang promised. Using a similar trick, the group managed to swindle another 700,000 yuan from three other private investors Oct. 10, 12 and Dec. 2.

Editor: Donald