Two Vietnamese women allegedly working as prostitutes were arrested in Yilan County for overstaying their visas, police said on Wednesday.
The two women, aged 25 and 37, were arrested in a house in Luodong Township (羅東), police said, adding that they had entered the country on Nov. 22 last year on electronic visas, which had expired.
During questioning, the women said that they had been providing sexual services to three or four clients per day, police said.
Police cited the women as saying that they were employed by a Vietnamese woman with Taiwanese citizenship surnamed Pan (潘), who charged each client NT$2,200, but only paid them NT$1,000 per client.
Pan was also detained and questioned, but said she had only been providing lodging to the women, police added.
The two women were handed over to the National Immigration Agency’s special operations unit in the county over contraventions of the Immigration Act (入出國及移民法), they said.
No prostitution charges were brought against them, as they were not caught in the act, police said.
Over the past few weeks, immigration authorities have been searching for 152 Vietnamese who on Dec. 21 and Dec. 23 entered Taiwan on group tours using an electronic visa application program, but disappeared shortly after arriving.
The two women were not part of the tourist groups, but had entered Taiwan under the same program, police said.
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