Letter: Time to tackle scammers

This week marked the second time in as many months that an elderly member of my family nearly lost her life savings to scammers. In the first instance, my aunt actually went down to her bank to withdraw her entire holdings, but was stopped by alert bank officials. The next day the scammers showed up at her house, trying to trick her into handing over her chop, the key to her entire life.

Like traffic and substandard food, scammers have become part of daily life in Taiwan.

Based China but connected to local crime gangs, they call with panic-inducing news about bank accounts, hoping to get the unsuspecting in front of an ATM in a state of unthinking agitation, so they can obtain PIN numbers necessary to clean out the victim's account.

Or may call to say that your son has been kidnapped, with a child piteously wailing in the background. The number and quality of scams evolves constantly, and no one can track them all.

We've used to the constant flow of scams, forgetting what an outrage they are.

It is an outrage that every day the newspapers report stories of senior citizens who have lost huge sums, an outrage that local crime gangs go unpunished, an outrage that China permits these syndicates to flourish on its soil.

It's time to put a stop to it.

The scammer issue seems almost tailor-made for positive political action, representing an issue that touches every household on the island, one that no sane person could object to action on.

Since it is unlikely that China will ever move against the syndicates there, it behooves the government to move against the supply of marks.

By the number of individuals willing to fork over money to scammers, the government could make progress on an important issue, and do so on the cheap, gaining easy points with the public.

What government needs to do is initiate a sustained, long-term program of aggressive advertising and public relations, explaining over and over again how the scammers work, how government agencies work and how to avoid scams.

This should be shown on television and in the print media, especially during the prime-time soaps so popular among the elderly here.

Local and TV stations should be asked to donate their time on a volunteer basis, reducing costs.

With key elections coming up soon, such a sustained, long-term campaign over the next couple of years would have the salutary effect of making the government look proactive on an issue that impacts upon every life around the nation. Not to mention, of course, the savings in time, money and lives.

Michael Turton
Taichung