Prosecutors investigating a Taipei-based international escort service yesterday summoned more people for questioning, with some saying they were deceived by false promises, had their passports confiscated when they arrived in the US and were forced to provide sex services under the threat of violence.
With more people providing testimony yesterday, the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said it would be questioning a total of 30 people in the coming days.
Eight women have claimed that they were victims of a prostitution ring allegedly headed by a woman, Tai Chun-yi (戴君儀), who procured female models and starlets for short-term work as “business trip companions” for rich businessmen in Taiwan and other countries.
Photo: CNA
A female model told prosecutors that Tai and her assistants would send text messages via telephone or social media with offers of free overseas trips in exchange for accompanying rich men on shopping and sightseeing trips during daytime hours.
However, she said that when she arrived in the US, Tai told her she would also be required to provide sex services for a male client. When she refused, she said Tai resorted to threats, demanding that she pay for her airfare, hotel and dining expenses.
The model said she agreed to pay Tai back and asked to be let go, but Tai told her: “I have your passport and your ID in my hands. You do not know anybody here, so where can you go?”
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
She said she was then forced to go along for the night, but while shopping the next day, she managed to contact the local police, who alerted the US law enforcement agency about the cross-border escort service operation.
Prosecutors said that Tai had made numerous trips to Las Vegas and other US cities on the west coast since Washington granted Taiwan visa waiver status in late 2012.
They said that Tai usually led a “tour group” of young women, which later on was detected and tracked by US immigration officers.
The US immigration agency and Department of Homeland Security placed Tai, also known as “Virginia Tai,” and her business assistant, Chung Yi-tzu (鍾宜姿), or “Cindy,” under surveillance on suspicion of human trafficking and prostitution. The information was later passed on to Taiwanese authorities through the American Institute in Taiwan.
With Taiwanese and US authorities monitoring the operation, they found that Tai has an extensive list of clients, mostly wealthy businessmen in Taiwan, China, Hong Kong and Macau, as well as overseas Chinese in the US, Singapore and Australia.
Local media, quoting a law enforcement official, said that the model’s testimony was only the tip of the iceberg. Besides confiscating the passports of the women, these international operations — including the one headed by Tai — mostly had links with Chinese criminal syndicates, the official said.
“If those models and starlets refused to go along [with the demands], the Chinese gangsters will first verbally abuse them, then beat them up and even force-feed them drugs to control them, so the girls are forced to cooperate by providing sexual services,” the official said.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS