A total of 56 telecom fraud suspects who worked under multiple Taiwan telecom fraud syndicates stood trial on Thursday at Xiamen Intermediate People's Court after more than 170 people were tried for the same charge in Jiangsu Province on August 15.

The suspects were accused of cheating victims from various provinces across the Chinese mainland out of over 15 million yuan ($2.45 million) and given a range of sentences.

Yao Wei, a lead suspect from Liaoning Province, was sentenced to 12 years in prison, the longest jail time among all suspects. Yao helped recruit people on the Chinese mainland to carry out the fraud scheme for one of the syndicates.

"The syndicates placed the people who actually conduct the fraud in one region and did their money laundering in another. This way when those people were busted by police, it became difficult to track down to the actual masterminds," said Wang.

All 56 of the suspects were arrested by police in Cambodia in 2011. They were lured into the fraud business when syndicate members offered them free flight tickets, free accommodation, a 5,000 yuan monthly salary and a bonus of roughly 4.5 percent of whatever amount they could cheat out of the victims.

Telecom fraud cases have boomed over the past few years and a complete criminal network, including underground banks and crime-related technology providers, has been developed to facilitate the growth of the crime, according to a statement from the Supreme People's Court (SPC) on Thursday.

"Over the past few years, we have come across many transnational telecom fraud cases in which criminals hide in separate countries or regions, adding more difficulty to police investigations," Sun Jungong, the spokesperson of the SPC, said at a press conference on Thursday in Xiamen, East China's Fujian Province.

Sun noted that a majority of the victims were laid-off workers, retirees and women of middle or old age and said the fraud schemes often brought catastrophic damage to their lives.

More than 47,000 of these telecom fraud cases were heard in courts across the country in 2011 and in 2012 that number jumped to more than 110,000, according to Wang Feng, an official from the Criminal Investigation Department under the Ministry of Public Security.

"On the one hand it shows how big a problem telecom fraud is for the public. On the other, it reflects the work done by police as they step up the crackdown on the crime," said Wang.