BEIJING, Oct. 23 -- Chinese courts have intensified the fight against telecom and Internet fraud to better protect the legitimate rights and interests of the people, the Supreme People's Court (SPC) said Wednesday.

Courts nationwide had concluded about 15,000 telecom and Internet fraud cases, convicting a total of 47,000 people, from the beginning of 2014 to June 2019, said Zhou Qiang, the SPC president, while delivering a report on strengthening criminal trials at the ongoing bimonthly session of the National People's Congress Standing Committee.

In one high-profile case, seven people were sentenced to prison in 2017 in east China's Shandong Province for their involvement in telecom fraud linked to the death of a teenager.

Xu Yuyu, a high school graduate from the city of Linyi, died of cardiac arrest in August 2016 after being defrauded out of 9,900 yuan (1,500 U.S. dollars), which she intended to use to pay her university tuition.