New Taipei City prosecutors yesterday indicted nine entertainers over their alleged connection to a fraud ring that produces falsified documents to help people evade military service, including actor Darren Wang (王大陸) and show host William Liao (廖威廉).
Twenty-eight people were charged with contravening the Punishment for Violation of Military Service System Act (妨害兵役治罪條例) and Article 214 of the Criminal Code for “causing a public official to make a false entry in a public document.”
Prosecutors alleged the fraud ring was ran by a man, Chen Chih-ming (陳志明), and his three assistants, and that they were paid to help people dodge compulsory military service by taking advantage of loopholes in medical examinations, using substitutes and falsifying documents.
Photo: Lo Pei-de, Taipei Times
Evidence showed that Chen received a total of NT$7.63 million (US$258,469) from “draft dodgers” from 2016, when the operation began, until it was shut down in January, prosecutors said.
Wang, 34, allegedly paid the highest fee of NT$3.6 million and is the most prominent star embroiled in the case, the indictment read.
The rest paid between NT$50,000 and NT$500,000, it said.
Other famous figures indicted in the case included singer Nine Chen (陳零九), Daniel Chen (陳大天) and Jushe Lee (李銓).
Taiwan requires all able-bodied males aged 18 to 36 to serve mandatory military service.
Those with certain physical or medical conditions may be exempted, but they must be certified through medical examinations that are conducted under the supervision of military conscription officers.
Wang, who mainly worked in China, allegedly handed his National Health Insurance Card to Chen for processing and paid a fee to evade military service, prosecutors said.
The fraud operation was shut down in January when Chen was arrested. When Wang applied for a new health insurance card in February, he claimed he had lost it.
His attempt to dodge military service led prosecutors to charge him with offenses of “causing a public official to make a false entry in a public document.”
An investigation found that Chen and his assistants taught people ways to cheat the blood pressure test, including sending a substitute to take the test, and use other loopholes, such as altering test results to indicate physical abnormalities, the prosecutors said.
When the “dodgers” go for a second round of examinations, they would again use deception and falsified papers to get exempted from military service, they said.
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