The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office on Thursday indicted a woman and seven of her family members for allegedly defrauding the National Health Insurance (NHI) system by pretending to have mental illnesses.
The amount of money the family is suspected to have defrauded insurance companies is the highest in the system’s history, the prosecutors’ office said, adding that it has suggested the court mete out severe punishment to deter similar behavior.
Prosecutor Huang Pei-yu (黃珮瑜) said she first learned of Chang Yu-chen (張玉真) and her family while attending an insurance seminar in 2018 and thereafter launched an investigation into the matter.
From 2008 to last year, the Chang family allegedly stayed at 11 hospitals and defrauded eight insurance companies by claiming they had symptoms including loss of sleep, hallucinatory hearing, and thoughts of suicide or murder, Huang said.
The claims misled doctors into believing that the family required immediate hospitalization, she said.
However, while staying at a hospital, the family allegedly left to eat, drink, sing at karaoke clubs or go on trips, Huang said, adding that the family members allegedly filed for insurance payouts after they were approved to leave the hospital.
The family allegedly requested NT$5,000 to NT$10,000 (US$165.29 to US$330.58) per day of hospitalization from insurance companies, totaling NT$55.7 million over 11 years, and successfully obtained NT$9.38 million from the NHI to cover “medical expenses,” Huang said.
Chang’s daughter allegedly accounted for NT$12 million in insurance claim payouts, and Chang reportedly demanded NT$50,000 from her daughter per month, Huang added.
Prosecutors said the two allegedly had a falling out over how to split the money, with Chang’s daughter telling Chang over the Line messaging app: “I’m not your Golden Goose. I’ll give you what you are due and no more.”
Chang’s brother-in-law said Chang had faked her insurance claims, and he later allegedly copied her methods to falsify claims, Huang said.
Investigators said they discovered messages on the brother-in-law’s cellphone stating that Chang had been removed from a hospital because she was wearing a lot of jewelry, most of which was paid for through insurance payouts.
Chang told prosecutors that she had resorted to falsifying insurance claims at the suggestion of her insurance agent, surnamed Lin (林), as she was millions of dollars in debt, Huang said.
Lin denied the accusation, prosecutors said, adding that they concluded there was insufficient evidence to show that Lin was involved in the alleged scheme.
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods