GUANGZHOU, April 11 (Xinhua) -- A court in south China's Guangdong Province on Tuesday sentenced 47 people, most of whom had been repatriated from Malaysia in 2016, for telecom fraud.

The defendants were given sentences ranging from 25 months to 12 years in prison and slapped with fines due to the seriousness of the circumstances.

According to a district court in Zhuhai city, the scammers were from two groups. Forty-two of them were extradited from Malaysia in April 2016, including 19 residents of Taiwan.

The court said between September 2015 and March 2016, the offenders impersonated bank staff, police officers or procuratorate staff, and cheated victims out of money in the name of upgrading bank accounts or account inspection. Most of the offenders committed fraud in Malaysia, while the others were in China.

They swindled 42 people on the Chinese mainland out of a total of 7 million yuan (1.1 million U.S. dollars), the court said.