Authorities on Wednesday apprehended a 21-year-old in Taichung suspected of using fake credentials to pose as a press photographer and recruiting female students as photographic models when his intention was to lure them for sex.
The Taichung District Prosecutors’ Office said it had seized camera equipment, CDs containing nude pictures and other evidence.
A spokesman at the office said the suspect, surnamed Tsao (曹), was active on online dating Web sites, primarily targeting high-school and grade-school female students.
With made-up credentials, Tsao allegedly claimed to have connections in media and entertainment circles to prey on girls’ ambitions to go into show business.
Tsao allegedly enticed his victims to his apartment to pose for model photographs.
Tsao allegedly persuaded them to undress for nude pictures and then raped them, also videotaping the assaults, prosecutors said.
Police said they found in Tsao’s CDs and computer files photographs and videotapes indicating at least five female victims.
Since most of the alleged victims are underaged students, prosecutors said they would lay charges of violating the Child and Youth Sexual Transaction Prevention Act (兒童及少年性交易防制條例) and of offenses against sexual autonomy and privacy.
Separately, authorities in Nantou County arrested a man on fraud charges.
The 36-year-old unemployed man surnamed Wu (巫) allegedly pretended to run a benevolent welfare foundation, but personally spent all donations he collected.
Wu allegedly set up the fraudulent “Taiwan Action Loving Heart Alliance” (台灣愛心行動聯盟), reportedly setting up donation boxes at stores in central Taiwan and appealing for public donations for “buying coffins and giving a proper burial for unidentified corpses and the elderly poor who die living alone.”
Police said Wu had pocketed at least a few million New Taiwan dollars, from more than 1,000 donors, but he could not offer any proper receipts or any proof he had bought any coffins.
The case has riled many people, as police said that Wu used the money to spend lavishly, pretending to come from a wealthy family and driving expensive sports cars.
It was also alleged that Wu once ran a fraudulent campaign to appeal for money and materials to help refugees in Africa.
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:
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