An increasing number of fraud cases involved the Internet this year, Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) said yesterday at an inter-agency meeting on anti-fraud strategies.
“The number of fraudulent telephone calls reported from January to last month decreased by 16.37 percent compared with the same period last year,” Jiang said. “However, cases of fraud committed via the Internet rose by 16.34 percent from January to last month compared with last year.”
Telephone and Internet fraud are ranked second and third respectively on a list of top 10 complaints compiled by an online poll conducted by the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission last month.
While the drop in telephone fraud shows that the government’s anti-fraud campaign has been effective, the increased use of the Internet in crime was worrisome, since “it may be harder to catch offenders if the fraud is committed via the Internet,” the minister said.
Cross-strait collaboration on prosecuting fraudulent organizations was a key task because many such organizations are based in China, he said.
“Since cross-strait anti-fraud collaboration began in June, we’ve cracked down on seven such organizations, arresting 210 people, of whom 147 are Taiwanese and 63 Chinese,” he said.
A National Police Agency official highlighted a case last month in which Taiwanese and Chinese authorities arrested 17 individuals allegedly belonging to a fraud ring in a coordinated move in Taiwan and Fujian Province.
“Cross-border criminal activities are increasing. We urge the public to not hesitate to dial the 165 anti-fraud hotline or report to the nearest police station whenever they receive a suspicious call or e-mail or discover suspicious Internet sites,” Jiang said. “Please help us crack down on fraud by submitting tips.”
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods