The National Police Administra-tion's Criminal Investigation Bureau yesterday arrested two suspected members of a criminal ring which took the advantage of fugitives' names to extort money from hospitals and clinics in central and southern Taiwan.
Officers from the bureau's Eighth Division arrested Pan Chia-wen (
According to police, the ring began to extort hospitals and clinics in January for sums ranging from NT$50,000 to NT$100,000. Members of the ring signed the blackmail letters using fugitives' names.
Inside the envelopes, ring members included a bullet.
"For example, Pan signed as Hsueh Chiu (薛球) to blackmail hospitals in Taichung and Chiayi and got away with it several times," a senior officer from the bureau said.
"According to our investigation, he blackmailed the same hospital a second time with a different fugitive's name. The hospital didn't realize it was the same guy so the it still paid," the officer said.
Hsueh is wanted by the National Police Administration for allegedly masterminding the Oct. 1 kidnapping of Taichung City Council Vice Speaker Chang Hung-nien (張宏年) last year as well as for other extortion and firearms cases.
Chang was released a few days after being grabbed by his kidnappers.
According to police, Pan and Wang admitted that they wrote the letters and said the bullets were provided by other ring members in Yunlin County. When the letters were completed, their colleagues in Taichung City would mail them.
When the victims confirmed that the money had been wired to the designated bank accounts, the ring's contacts in Chiayi City allegedly withdrew the funds from ATM machines. The contacts wore motorcycle helmets to avoid being captured by the ATM's security cameras.
Police said Pan admitted to writing 28 threatening letters.
Police said they are still trying to figure out the total number of people involved in the ring as well as the total number of hospitals and clinics that received the threatening letters.
The police raid did not find any weapons in Pan and Wang's apartment.
"We will try to arrest the rest of the ring as soon as possible. However, we also urge those who were victimized by this ring not to pay. What you need to do is contact us and let the police take over. Paying the money will only make the situation worse, just like adding fuel to the fire," the senior officer said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching