Two leaders of a job scam operation linked to kidnappings and the deaths of three people were sentenced to life in prison, the Shilin District Court said yesterday.
The Taipei court handed life sentences to Fu Yu-lin (傅榆藺) and Chen Hua-wei (陳樺韋), who headed the operation, while 27 others received prison sentences ranging from 14 months to 29-and-a-half years.
The 11-month joint trial of the 29 suspects resulted in Fu and Chen being found guilty of more than 300 counts each, among them kidnapping resulting in death, fraud, armed robbery, forced drug abuse, organized crime and improper disposal of a body.
Photo courtesy of the New Taipei City Police Department
Tu Cheng-che (杜承哲), a third leader of the crime ring who allegedly gave orders to Fu and Chen, was captured in April after fleeing authorities and is being tried separately.
Fu, Chen and others in September last year began asking people who rented residences in Taoyuan’s Jhongli (中壢) or New Taipei City’s Tamsui (淡水) districts to attend interviews for high-paying jobs, prosecutors said.
Others responded to online offers to “rent out” inactive bank accounts for large sums of money, they said.
People who responded to the ads for either offer were held against their will by members of the operation, who took their bankbooks, account passwords and IDs, they said.
They were held at two locations for periods ranging from a few days to more than a month, prosecutors said.
The stolen bank accounts were used to commit fraud and launder money as part of a broader scheme that took in about NT$390 million (US$12.34 million) in illicit gains from more than 250 people, they said.
People who were held captive told prosecutors that they were often fed only one meal a day, forced to take sleeping pills, and were beaten, tasered or pepper-sprayed if they talked or did not follow orders.
Police in November last year found 35 people being held in an apartment in Taoyuan and 26 in a Tamsui residence.
The operation resulted in the deaths of three captives, with two bodies discovered in Taoyuan’s Gueishan District (龜山) and one in Nantou County, the court said.
The body found in Nantou was that of a 38-year-old man who fell to his death from the 11th floor after crawling out of a bathroom window in an attempt to escape on Oct. 17 last year, authorities said.
The two others, a 45-year-old woman and a 57-year-old man, both had chronic medical conditions and died after being held for 32 days and 16 days respectively, they said.
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