Chinese court accepts high-profile telecom fraud case

A court in east China’s Shandong Province has accepted a telecom fraud case involving the death of a teenager, which sparked a national outcry last year.

The trial against seven defendants will be held at the intermediate people’s court of Linyi City for the lawsuit filed Monday by the city’s procuratorate.

Xu Yuyu, a high school graduate in Linyi, died of cardiac arrest in August last year after losing 9,900 yuan (1,440 U.S. dollars) of her university tuition fees to telecom fraudsters.

The Supreme People’s Procuratorate has issued a circular urging procuratorates at all levels to tighten crackdowns on telecom and Internet fraud.

Chinese police caught 19,345 telecom fraud suspects last year.