The Criminal Investigation Bureau on Monday said that it has arrested several people in connection with two separate fraud cases involving money transfers from convenience stores and through the Line messaging app.
A man surnamed Chien (簡), 26, was arrested in Taoyuan for allegedly defrauding people out of NT$7 million (US$226,993) over the past 10 months, the bureau said.
Chien targeted the nation’s four major convenience store chains, defrauding a total of 70 stores, CIB Ninth Investigation Corps squad leader Chiu Cheng-ti (邱承迪) said.
Police received a report in June last year that telephone calls were made to the stores by a person claiming to be an executive from the chains’ headquarters, such as the general manager of customer services, the head of the logistics and delivery department or the executive in charge of computer network facilities, Chiu said.
“After gaining the staff’s trust, Chien allegedly asked for the store owner’s Line username and telephone number. This way he could add himself to the store’s internal Line chat group,” Chiu said.
Chien allegedly discussed the delivery of goods and business arrangements through the app, and asked the stores to transfer money to his bank account or send credit points for video games, Chiu said.
The CIB and local police raided Chien’s residence and detained him.
Police seized his computer, mobile phones, account books and other items from his residence, including amphetamine.
Chien has been indicted for fraud and possession of illegal drugs, and has been placed under judicial detention, Chiu said.
In the second case, the bureau arrested three suspects who allegedly used Line and Facebook to defraud people.
The mastermind is a man surnamed Tang (唐), 26, and the other suspects are a woman surnamed Wu (吳), 23, and a man surnamed Chen (陳), police said.
Tang allegedly placed job advertisements on Facebook, promising to pay applicants NT$11,000 within 10 days if they gave him their bank account information, police said.
He also set up a Line group to provide taxi and home delivery services, and used the victims’ bank accounts to make transactions, police said.
He allegedly told the victims to collect the NT$11,000 and other parcels at convenience stores, while using their bank accounts to make unauthorized money transfers and allegedly used them as dummy accounts for illegal transactions.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS