Two men have been taken into custody for their alleged ties to a money counterfeiting ring, police said yesterday.
One suspect is a temple master surnamed Hsieh (謝). About NT$3.6 million (US$118,409) in counterfeit US banknotes was found at his temple in Taoyuan, the Criminal Investigation Bureau said in a statement, adding that the other is a Taichung resident surnamed (高).
Hsieh, 68, has been in detention since late last year, International Criminal Affairs Division officer Lee Yang-chi (李泱輯) said, adding that 61-year-old Kao was apprehended earlier this week after a weeks-long search, with prosecutors placing him under travel restrictions and confining him to his home after questioning.
Photo: Chiu Chun-fu, Taipei Times
“The seized US$100 bills are of very high quality owing to a high-level counterfeiting production process,” Lee said.
“They look and feel just like real US banknotes and can pass testing by small detectors used by bank clerks,” Lee added. “Most people would have difficulty determining if these are real or fake.”
A preliminary assessment of the evidence indicated that the counterfeit bills were of the same origin as those seized during a raid in December last year from a currency counterfeiting ring, which resulted in the arrest of five alleged members, the bureau said.
In that operation in Taipei, New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重), Taoyuan and Changhua County, police recovered US$11.04 million of fake US$100 bills made on a top-of-the-line printing press operated by a then-64-year-old man surnamed Liao (廖).
The bureau tracked down the suspects following reports by a bank in Taoyuan of receiving possible fake US banknotes, which passed initial detection, but were later found to be forgeries by more sophisticated equipment, Lee said.
The evidence eventually led to Hsieh, Lee said, adding that police in November last year conducted a search that uncovered 1,200 fake US$100 bills in his temple and detained him for questioning.
Kao apparently bought the counterfeit bills from Hsieh and went to local markets to sell them, exchanging one for NT$400, despite a real US$100 bill being worth about NT$3,000, Lee said.
“The counterfeits Kao sold were then locally resold to Southeast Asian migrant workers, who could remit US currency home,” Lee said, adding that Hsieh had sold about US$30,000 of fake bills.
Kao and Hsieh face charges of counterfeiting valuable securities, the bureau said, adding that an investigation is under way to verify links with Liao’s operation.
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