(Photo/www.hangzhou.com.cn)

HANGZHOU, Aug. 25 (Xinhua) -- Forty-four telecom fraud suspects were repatriated from Malaysia to China late Thursday, police in eastern Zhejiang Province announced Friday.

The suspects, all Chinese nationals residing in Malaysia, were captured in two Chinese-Malaysian joint operations over the past three months. They allegedly made phone calls to people in the Chinese mainland pretending to be law enforcers and were able to extort over 10 million yuan (1.51 million U.S. dollars).

The suspects were returned on a charter flight which arrived at Wenzhou Longwan International Airport Thursday night.

In recent years, Chinese police have tracked down Chinese nationals hiding overseas who have participated in telecom fraud, mainly targeting victims in the mainland.

Also on Thursday, police in Sichuan Province repatriated 144 suspects from Cambodia, bringing the number of repatriated telecom fraud suspects by Sichuan police this year to 197.