Law enforcement agencies have completed a week-long national sweep targeting telecoms fraud, with police officials yesterday saying that they have apprehended about 200 suspects and are hopeful of recovering significant amounts of money.
The crackdown began in Taipei earlier this week, where police arrested 157 people suspected of taking part in telecom scams mostly targeting Chinese, although there were also Taiwanese victims.
Taipei City Police Department spokesman Chou Shou-sung (周壽松) said that a preliminary check of evidence and records seized indicate that scam operators netted more than NT$103.5 million (US$3.19 million) from about 626 people.
“The situation was the result of recent crackdowns and arrests in foreign countries of Taiwanese accused of involvement in telecom scams, such as in Kenya, Malaysia, Indonesia and other countries. We received reports that many high-level operators and organizers of these fraud rings had returned to Taiwan, because they had to lie low while waiting for the storm to blow over. Therefore we mounted a focused sweep to root them out,” Chou said.
Chou said police officials were able to stop money transfers by victims amounting to about NT$3.32 million during the operation. Among the evidence seized were boxes of documents, including fraudulent court-issued documents and falsified police certificates.
Investigators said the scam operators called people pretending to be government officials conducting investigations and told the victims to co-operate with asset checks while instructing them to transfer money for “temporary safekeeping” as part of a judicial procedure.
Another scam used was hacking into Web sites selling goods and telling people there were problems with their payments and that they should transfer money to another account, or they would ask for personal information and passwords then empty the victim’s bank account.
Meanwhile, Tainan and Taichung police announced they had broken up a major telecom scam, apprehending 27 suspects, including a person surnamed Chen (陳), believed to be the mastermind of the operation.
Tainan police said the evidence and records seized during the raid showed Chen allegedly made more than NT$60 million over the past year in an operation targeting Taiwanese, with at least 196 victims.
The suspects, including callers, accountants, technicians and money collectors, who withdraw cash from ATMs, were taken to local prosecutors’ offices for questioning, pending fraud and other related charges by prosecutors.
Police asked the public to help crack down on telecoms scams by providing tips, and are offering a reward of up to NT$200,000 for information on major operations.
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