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.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift