The Taipei District Court this week found three men guilty of scamming billions of New Taiwan dollars from their victims in three separate cases.
Yen Cheng-te (嚴程德), the founder of Power Corp, Uan Cultural and Creative Co and other companies in 2012, promoted a “paintings as an investment” scheme, the court said.
The scheme attracted considerable publicity, because Yen was able to enlist the help of celebrity endorsers, including show hosts Yin Nai-jing (尹乃菁) and Lan Hsuan (蘭萱), it said.
Yen convinced more than 600 individuals to buy about 5,100 paintings and made a profit of NT$530 million (US$17.5 million), it said.
He claimed that the paintings were limited editions and promised that their value would double within a few years.
He also organized art exhibitions and held a series of forums, titled “Global Trends in the Culture Business and Investment Prospects,” inviting media personalities to discuss the collectible art painting market and other potential ventures, the ruling said.
The court found Yen guilty of violating the Banking Act (銀行法) and sentenced him to eight years and six months.
Lin Chao-teng (林朝騰) was sentenced to 10 years and six months in prison for defrauding more than 2,000 investors, the court said.
Lin set up Sheng Da Co to attract investors to his company’s organic vegetables grown using LED lighting, and bottled sea water which touted miscellaneous health benefits.
Investigators said Lin garnered more than NT$6.6 billion through illegal investment dealings. The court also found him guilty of violating the Banking Act.
The last case involved Rewinbet International Co, which was established by Yang Huang-chun (楊黃俊).
The court sentenced Yang to seven years and four months in prison, after finding him guilty of defrauding more than 200 investors of over NT$130 million with his scheme of selling franchises for small-scale lottery and betting-game operations.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,