The suspect in what has been described as the “perfect insurance scam” was repatriated from China yesterday to face criminal charges.
The 66-year-old Hsu Wen-tung (許文同), whose three children claimed more than NT$106 million (US$3.6 million) in insurance compensation, was repatriated by Criminal Investigation Bureau officers.
Investigators said Hsu, who ran a construction business in then-Taipei County, but whose business failed in the 1990s, bought life insurance from Cathay Life Insurance in 1993.
Photo: CNA
In July 2001, as Typhoon Toraji was hitting the nation, Hsu drove his wife, Yan Li-ying (嚴麗瑛), along the Binhai Coast Road (濱海公路) to Yilan County,and their children followed in another car, investigators said.
The family stopped and pushed Hsu’s car down a cliff overlooking the sea and then the children drove their parents away, investigators allege.
Hsu’s children claimed that their parents died in an accident and that their bodies were washed away, they added.
They said the couple hid in the county’s Tamsui Township (淡水) afterward. Their children claimed more than NT$106 million in compensation from Cathay.
The insurance company thought the case was suspicious and filed a suit in a district civil court, but the court decided the company had to pay off the policy, investigators said.
They allege that in 2005, Hsu and Yan flew to China’s Jiangsu Province with fake passports and residency permits.
They said that in May, Yan, who got very sick and was hospitalized in Jiangsu, was found by Chinese authorities to have false documents.
Yan died later and the authorities would not allow her to be cremated in China.
They added that in June, Hsu’s son reported the matter to the Keelung District Prosecutors’ Office, revealing the scam and said that his father would like to be sent back to Taiwan with the body of his wife.
Hsu, who arrived in the country at 2pm with Yan’s body on the same plane, was sent to the Prosecutors’ Office.
Investigators said all five members of the family were suspected of involvement in the fraud.
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
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
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