NANNING, Feb. 22 (Xinhua) -- Sixteen people in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region have received sentences ranging from 15 months to nine years for telecom or internet fraud, local authorities said Thursday.

According to Binyang County court, the criminals, involved in 11 cases, are mostly young people in their 20s. They have also been fined up to 200,000 yuan (31,500 U.S. dollars).

In one of the cases, a gang of three women bought personal information of others from the internet and cheated the victims through WeChat pretending to be their friends. They stole a total of 38,000 yuan.

In another development, Tongliang District police of southwest China's Chongqing Municipality said on Monday that they had caught nine suspects allegedly involved in a telecom fraud case with over 3,000 victims.

In the first nine months of 2017, prosecutors indicted 22,268 people in 8,257 cases involving property violations via the Internet or telecommunications.