Gang's $145m scam tricked healthy tourists into buying fake cancer drug

Police have detained 132 members of a criminal organization that made about 1 billion yuan ($145 million) from convincing Chinese tourists they had cancer and getting them to pay for fake medicine.

The gang operated under a biotech company registered in Dalian, Liaoning province, and found victims through a national network of beauty salons, according to the Ministry of Public Security.

Authorities were alerted to the scam when a woman surnamed Wang filed a police report in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, saying that a salon had deceived her into spending 6 million yuan on cancer medication.

A nationwide investigation discovered that the Dalian company offered salon customers free luxury trips abroad, mostly to Southeast Asia, where they would be encouraged to receive a health check from an employee posing as a doctor or medical professor from the United States.

Victims were then told they had cancer and convinced to buy a drug called Cancer Shield, priced at 98,000 to 398,000 yuan. The pills, which had no medicinal value, were labeled as a US import but were actually produced in China for a few hundred yuan.

Police raided the Dalian company's premises, where they detained 132 suspects as well as seized 700 million yuan and more than 3,000 boxes of fake medicine, Chen Shiqu, deputy director of the ministry's Criminal Investigation Bureau, said Thursday.

Officers handling the case will head overseas for further investigation, while efforts to clamp down on such fraud will be strengthened, Chen added.