A group of 19 Taiwanese on a “tour” were repatriated from Malaysia on Thursday, as local police served them with arrest warrants upon their arrival at Kaohsiung Siaogang Airport, on charges of engaging in defrauding operations with a criminal syndicate.
Two of the accused, surnamed Hung (洪) and Lai (賴), were detained in Malaysia because they reportedly did not cooperate with police investigations.
According to Malaysian authorities, if the two detainees are found guilty, they are to be flogged with lashes to their bare buttocks, in accordance with local law.
The 19 men and women, headed by a man named Liu Wei-lung (劉維隆) were taken into custody by Kaohsiung City Police and Criminal Investigation Bureau officers upon returning to Taiwan on Thursday.
After receiving a tip-off in November last year the bureau said they formed a task force to help co-ordinate an eight-month international investigation effort, which involved law-enforcement agencies in Taiwan, China and Malaysia.
It was alleged that Liu, 27, had connections to a criminal syndicate in Malaysia and he lured mostly young Taiwanese on an all-expenses paid “tour” or “working holiday” in Malaysia.
The group worked for a syndicate operating from an estate in Selangor State, where a telecommunications base run by Chinese nationals was set up for making telephone calls to China, according to police.
The group made scam telephone calls to Chinese citizens, pretending to be Chinese police officials conducting an investigation and requested cooperation to conduct money transfers. The scam defrauded people of about NT$10 million (US$315,636) since March this year, the bureau said.
Malaysian authorities raided the Selangor State syndicate base in May and arrested 21 Taiwanese and three Chinese, all alleged members of the operation.
During the raid, the Malaysian police confiscated telecommunications equipment, mobile phones, laptop computers, and listings of thousands of people living in China.
Some of the suspects said they are victims, having been deceived by Liu and his associates and they thought they had been given a free tour of Malaysia, however, when they arrived they were forced to work, as their passports and documents been taken and they had no friends in Malaysia to ask for help.
Officials urged the public not to be greedy and not to be enticed by all-expenses paid trips to foreign countries, which might lead to unlawful activities as a conviction might mean severe penalties abroad and it also harms Taiwan’s international image.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
RSS