Police officers paid visits to about 100 residents over the weekend to warn them that they may have been targeted for a new kind of telecom scam, Shanghai police said Sunday.

The scam seeks to trick individuals into thinking they are wanted for a crime, such as money laundering, and need to transfer money into a phony police bank account.

While investigating the scam's perpetrators, police came across a file containing the personal information of more than 100 individuals, according to a press release from the Shanghai Public Security Bureau. The nature of the information indicated that the listed individuals were potential targets for the scammers.

"More than 100 officers have been dispatched to the residents' homes since Friday afternoon to notify them about the new scam," said a press officer surnamed Wu with the Shanghai Public Security Bureau. "Officers had gotten in touch with most of them by Saturday morning."

Police have investigated at least 10 cases in which the victims were listed on a phony website purporting to be that of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, Wu said.

The website looked almost exactly like the official site of the procuratorate, with the one exception that it displayed a prominent banner for a national most-wanted criminal list.

After clicking on the banner, victims were prompted to enter their State identification card number, which would then lead them to a Web page displaying their names and photographs.

The scammers would then ask the victims to hand over their bank card numbers and passwords.

Police said that this particular scam was more devious than past telecom scams because it made use of personal information that the scammers had already acquired to target victims.

For the 100 or so listed individuals who lived in remote areas or had left Shanghai, police notified them of the scam over the phone.

Police are still investigating the case. They stressed that police would never set up a "safety account" for residents to transfer money into.