A 32-member fraud ring operating across the Taiwan Strait has been uncovered through joint efforts by law enforcement units on the two sides of the strait, Kaohsiung city police announced Thursday. Thirteen suspects were arrested in Taiwan, including the mastermind, surnamed Yeh, along with account books, computers, cellphones, travel documents and remittance records that were used to commit the fraud. Earlier that same day, 19 accomplices were also detained in a raid carried out by Chinese public security agents in China. According to the Kaohsiung police authorities, the criminal group had made about NT$500 million (US$15.87 million) over the past six months by posing as personnel of Chinese telephone companies or public security authorities to cheat people on both sides of the strait. The public security authorities in Quanzhou City in China's Fujian Province first received complaints from local residents and passed the information to the Taiwanese authorities in line with a cross-strait cooperation mechanism that was established by the two sides to crack down on rampant cross-strait fraud. Meanwhile, Taiwan's Ministry of the Interior (MOI) reported that 4,837 attempted telephone fraud cases have been successfully thwarted over the past six years thanks to an exclusive anti-fraud telephone line under its jurisdiction. 'As much as NT$657.69 million in potentially swindled money was secured thanks to the help of the anti-fraud unit during the six-year period, ' Chiu Feng- kuang, deputy chief of the Criminal Investigation Bureau under the MOI's National Policy Agency, reported in a news conference. Between the start of this year and April 27, 422 attempted fraud incidents were stymied by the anti-fraud unit, he elaborated. Although the MOI's anti-fraud line workers took around 3.27 million inquiries from members of the public questioning whether they had been targeted by a fraud ring, more than NT$8.8 billion was still raked in by con artists working various telephone scams, he reported. According to Chiu, the public are very easily taken in by scamsters if they claim to be law enforcement personnel, such as judges, prosecutors, investigation agents or police. 