BEIJING, May 27 -- Over 49,000 criminal suspects of telecom and internet fraud have been handed over to Chinese custody by Myanmar since July 2023, according to the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) on Monday.

Several notorious criminal groups linked to the fraud have been dealt crushing blows with a number of major criminal suspects arrested, the ministry said at a press conference.

Since the beginning of 2023, the number of telecom and internet fraud cases in north Myanmar involving Chinese citizens had remained high, often resulting in other criminal acts such as illegal border-crossing and detainment. The MPS had prioritized the situation and launched high-pressure crackdowns on such crimes, yielding significant results.

Over the last five years, public security agencies across the country have cracked more than 1.94 million cases of telecom and internet fraud, the ministry said.

Notably, the monthly number of new cases of such fraud has been declining for eight consecutive months, indicating that the rise in such crimes has been effectively curtailed, according to the MPS.