Prosecutors yesterday said that they are investigating Chang Shu-ching (張淑晶), 46, a woman dubbed the “evil landlady” by local media outlets for allegedly repeatedly swindling her tenants.
In her latest brush with notoriety, she has been accused of attempting to defraud two female Malaysian tourists, with a proprietor of a budget hotel in New Taipei City allegedly catching her in the act and calling the police.
Chang posted picture advertisements on international hotel accommodation Web sites using photographs of luxury rooms, which she claimed to represent, New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office investigators said.
The two Malaysian women booked a hotel room in Taipei she had advertised on the Web site, paying about US$150 (NT$4,837) by credit card to stay in the room over New Year’s Eve, officials said.
When they arrived in Taipei, Chang met them and allegedly told them all the rooms at the hotel were full, and transferred the two tourists to a budget hotel in New Taipei City’s Yonghe District (永和), run by the proprietor, Chen Po-jen (陳柏仁).
Chen said his hotel room only cost NT$1,200 per night, and alleged that Chang pocketed the price difference.
Worse still, Chen said, knowing that the two tourists were out at the time, Chang showed up to demand the NT$1,200 back, claiming that she had booked the room, but she was not the person staying there.
Chen refused to hand back the money, he said, adding that when he realized he was arguing with the notorious “evil landlady,” he took photographs of her and reported the incident to the police.
“Her actions were deplorable. Taiwan is trying to attract more foreign tourists to boost the economy, but this wretched person is ripping them off,” Chen said.
“This really hurts Taiwan’s image in the international community,” he added.
New Taipei City prosecutors have since 2015 been investigating 44 charges against Chang which include fraud, forgery, false accusations and others, some of which stem from lawsuits she has filed against more than 60 tenants, and also her relatives, over rental disputes, in most of which she sought compensation for alleged damage to her properties or violations of rental contracts.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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