A group in Changhua County is suspected of having defrauded the national treasury of nearly NT$16 million (US$524,023) by printing fake receipts to claim prize money from the Ministry of Finance’s Uniform Invoice Lottery.
Changhua District Prosecutors’ Office Head Prosecutor Wu Yu-hsuan (吳宇軒) on Tuesday led a team of more than 100 people to search and seize hundreds of boxes of blank receipts, printers, allegedly fake receipts and other evidence.
Prosecutors Shih Chiao-wen (施教文) and Lai Cheng-an (賴政安) have been assigned to form a special committee to investigate the case.
Photo courtesy of the Changhua District Prosecutors’ Office
The office has summoned 12 people, including a man surnamed Lu (盧), 33, who is believed to be a main suspect and has been taken into custody.
Another main suspect, surnamed Tseng (曾), 34, was released on bail of NT$100,000.
The group allegedly set up a fake firm to buy large amounts of blank uniform receipts, the office said.
After the lottery’s winning numbers are announced, the group would take the blank receipts with the winning numbers on them and print fake details of a transaction that had not occurred, it said.
They would then distribute the fake receipts to group members to take to different convenience stores to claim the prizes, the office said.
Since November 2016, the group has redeemed 59,203 receipts for prizes varying from NT$200 to NT$200,000, totaling NT$15,965,800, it said.
From July to August, the group purchased 1.7 million blank receipts from the National Taxation Bureau, spending about NT$244,800, office Deputy Chief Prosecutor Yeh Chien-cheng (葉建成) said.
Including the roughly NT$70,000 for the 5 percent business tax for the seven water filling stations it was using as shell companies, the group spent about NT$310,000 each lottery session for NT$2.2 million in prize money, Yeh said.
From last month to this month, it purchased another 2 million blank receipts, he said, adding that those were seized.
Yeh said he believed that this is the “first case” of people taking advantage of blank receipts to engage in lottery fraud in Taiwan.
Group members are suspected of contravening the Organized Crime Prevention Act (組織犯罪防制條例), the Business Entity Accounting Act (商業會計法) and the Criminal Code, among other laws, he said.
There were concerns that Tseng and Lu could destroy or alter evidence or collude, so the office applied for permission from the court to detain them, he said.
Three other suspects, surnamed Yang (楊), Wu (吳) and Wei (魏), were also released on NT$100,000 bail, he said.
Another seven were released on bail of NT$20,000, he added.
The investigation was spurred by the National Taxation Bureau of the Central Area’s suspicion about the high winning rate of receipts issued by the company.
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