Shenzhen police recently cracked a Bao'an gang suspected of printing and selling pirated books, seizing more than 430,000 books valued at about 10 million yuan (US$1.25 million), the police said in a press conference Friday.

On February 27, the police received a report that a gang suspected of printing and selling huge amounts of pirated books was active in Longhua subdistrict, Bao'an. The police soon established a task force in coordination with the culture bureau.

The task force sent out three teams of investigators to different locations March 3. The first team raided an illegal shop, rounding up seven suspects and seizing about 5,000 pirated books. The second team confiscated more than 290,000 pirated books from a warehouse in Longhua and the third team found more than 130,000 pirated books in another warehouse in Bantian. Four of the seven suspects were fined and the other three were arrested.

During the press conference Friday, the police also announced several other cases they had solved recently.

They raided a gambling den in Longhua on March 7, seizing more than 290,000 yuan in cash and detaining 54 gamblers. In another action March 28, they detained 54 gamblers and seized more than 200,000 yuan in cash at a site in Luohu District. After investigation, seven organizers of the gambling racket were arrested.

The police also seized three kilograms of poisonous chemicals from a vehicle at a tollgate on Huizhou-Yantian Expressway on April 3.

A police spokesman told the conference that they had finished a hotel registration system linking computers in local hotels with the bureau's database to identify fugitives wanted by the police nationwide. By March 25, 220 fugitives had been arrested with the help of the system. 

(Shenzhen Daily April 10, 2006)