Authorities yesterday apprehended alleged members of a Taichung criminal ring, which operated a sophisticated dating scam that employed young men to deceive women looking for love, who were defrauded of their money through phony investment deals.
A police spokesman said the alleged masterminds of the operation, 30-year-old Lee Tsung-han (李宗翰) and 28-year-old Hsieh Chia-che (謝家哲), and four other members, who are all in their 20s, were taken into custody.
After following up on leads that led to a month-long surveillance operation, vice units obtained warrants to apprehend the suspects at their office in Taichung’s Situn District (四屯).
“This group of young men used their good looks and charm to target women in their 30s who are mostly residents of China, Hong Kong and Macau,” a police spokesperson said. “It was quite a sophisticated international scam, employing online chat apps to prey on the women.”
Police officers also confiscated ketamine, parts of a disassembled handgun, notebook computers and seven Chinese-made mobile phones.
They also found a book on female psychology and several training manuals containing guides and step-by-step instructions on conversing with women to stimulate and maintain an online love relationship.
Among the tips covered by the materials were: “Use determined and persuasive words to say you admire her and have fallen in love with her,” and “To make money, you must learn how to manipulate women.”
According to police, the ring targeted lonely women on messaging apps like Line and on online dating Web sites, charming their victims in online conversations.
“We found a significant amount of mushy and affectionate exchanges in their online chats, even going as far as calling the victims ‘my dear wife’ as they endeavored to convince women they were having a genuine romantic relationship with a handsome young man,” the police spokesman said.
The members of the ring pretended to be employed as managers in investment companies and, when they felt the time was ripe after gaining a victim’s trust, they asked the women to wire money into Hong Kong-based accounts, ostensibly to help them cover short-term payments on futures and other investments, police said.
Preliminary estimates showed that more than 100 women were cheated out of their love and money by the scam, police said, adding that when apprehended, the ring members’ computer records indicated that each of them had more than 10 women currently targeted.
During the raid on the ring’s office, a Chinese woman living in the US called to say she was going to transfer US$400,000. Fortunately, police officers on the scene managed to talk her out of doing so and explained the situation.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift