Top employees at Taiwan Svenson Hair Co were indicted on fraud charges yesterday for allegedly selling common shampoo products with no medical properties at unreasonably high prices.
The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted the owner of the company, Chen Ying-chi (陳穎祺), 48, and four of the company’s officials.
Prosecutors said Svenson has run seven stores in Taiwan since 2005. The company sells 47 highly priced hair health and restoration products and offers courses on hair health and rejuvenation.
Prosecutors said a customer surnamed Soong (宋), 24, had spent more than NT$460,000 on Svenson’s products and courses, but found they had had no impact on his hair loss.
Soong subsequently filed a fraud lawsuit with the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office against the company.
Prosecutors said Hong Kong movie star Waise Lee (李子雄) had been hired to endorse the products in an advertisement.
They said Lee, who has a hair loss problem, wore a wig to prove his hair had been restored.
Prosecutors said they believed the company might have committed fraud.
Prosecutors said a man surnamed Wang (王) also endorsed Svenson’s products in an advertisement. The company allegedly filmed the man after having him cut his hair to make it look as though he had less hair and then filmed him one month later after his hair had grown back.
In a further move designed to win public trust, prosecutors said the company had movie star Aaron Chen (陳昭榮) and TV variety show host Hsu Nai-lin (徐乃麟) promote the company’s products.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
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