Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said yesterday that she had not ruled out filing a lawsuit against a teenager who allegedly pretended to be her legislative aide in a bid to retrieve data from the Taipei City Department of Labor.
The teenager also allegedly fooled former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) last year by posing as a fortune teller.
Cheng told reporters that she had reported the case to the police after 16-year-old Huang Chao-kang (黃照岡) or “Huang Chi” (黃琪) pretended to be Cheng’s assistant on three occasions.
Huang is alleged to have called the security company of his residence at the end of last year, posing as a “Ms Wang” from Cheng’s legislative office, and demanded that his apartment building’s security guard be punished.
Huang then allegedly called the labor department using the same alias on Jan. 6 in a bid to retrieve labor insurance data on his tarot students.
He also allegedly tried to apply for a cellphone using a fake ID while claiming that he was helping Cheng’s assistant with the application.
The 16-year-old was found last year to have allegedly scammed clients, including Chen, by pretending that he was a UK-trained fortuneteller.
He was summoned to the police station for questioning late on Wednesday.
A story in the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) yesterday quoted him as saying that he was suffering political persecution.
Cheng said she had received numerous phone calls informing her of Huang’s conduct.
Cheng said Huang had also called her on her cellphone to apologize, but “he refused to admit any wrongdoing and blamed everything on his assistant.”
“His apology was meaningless,” Cheng said.
“I think this child has problems communicating with people. He pretended to be my aide because he thought he would be able to enjoy certain privileges,” Cheng said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week