An international scam in which proprietors allegedly organized tour packages for Taiwanese women to give birth in the US before helping their clients defraud the government and insurance companies out of tens of millions of New Taiwan dollars is being investigated, law enforcement officials said yesterday.
The Criminal Investigation Bureau said it has questioned three suspects and received testimonies and depositions from 34 women who allegedly participated in the scam.
It is estimated that the proprietors and participants in the scheme have made more than NT$30 million (US$916,702) over the past few years, with each Taiwanese woman receiving a NT$400,000 to NT$1.5 million insurance payout after filing fraudulent claims with the National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) and other private insurance companies, bureau spokesman Chang Yue-han (張躍翰) said.
In the past two years there have been about 1,000 Taiwanese women who have claimed a payment from the NHIA for a childbirth in a foreign country, Chang said, adding that about 80 percent of those claimants gave birth in the US.
At least 180 of those women have come under investigation, Chang said, adding that they bought health insurance policies from various providers before heading to the US to give birth.
He said that women who have been investigated allegedly filed insurance claims with the NHIA and other private insurance companies to cover expenses incurred for caesarean section deliveries and placenta previa — a condition in which the placenta partially or wholly blocks the neck of the uterus during childbirth.
CIB officials said they are seeking to bring charges for fraud, forgery and other offenses.
The three women who were detained for questioning yesterday — Liu Chao-hsun (柳昭薰), operator of “Liuliu Service,” Yen Yu-chen (顏玉貞), proprietor of “Chiao Mommy,” and Liang Shu-jung (梁淑嫆), a former insurance agent who allegedly helped participants file for claims — are the suspected masterminds of the operation.
Liu and Yen operated their businesses online, selling “medical tour packages” to the US.
Investigators said Liu and Yen allegedly offered their packages — priced at between NT$400,000 and NT$1 million — with collaborating Chinese or Taiwanese obstetricians and doctors working in US hospitals and private clinics.
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
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
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