A Taiwan-based scam ring allegedly funneled more than NT$5 billion (US$156 million) a year to China while targeting Taiwanese and Chinese in the US, Japan and Canada, police said yesterday.
Police revealed the case after more than a dozen people were arrested for allegedly transporting cash in a scheme targeting a Taiwanese woman surnamed Hsu (徐) living in California.
Amid a surge in the stock market last year, the group targeted Hsu, who is in her 80s and has been living in California for nearly 30 years, although most of her family lives in Taiwan, police said in a statement.
Photo courtesy of the Taipei City Police Department
The group sent members to California, who operated in teams of three on a rotating basis, police said.
They rented accommodation near Hsu’s home, from where they monitored her, police said.
Whenever the group deceived Hsu into handing over cash or gold, the members in California would collect it, police said, adding that between September last year and Jan. 8, three or four teams made trips to the US.
Each team stayed in the US for about a month, with about 17 in-person pickups conducted in total, collecting NT$89.26 million (US$2.79 million) in cash and gold, the statement said.
Hsu in May returned to Taiwan and reported the case, as the men she had interacted with had Taiwanese accents and issued receipts written in traditional Chinese, it said.
The Taipei City Police Department and the National Police Agency’s Criminal Investigation Bureau said they formed a joint task force, which found more than 10 fingerprints on 17 falsified receipts provided by Hsu.
The fingerprints showed that several of the suspects had backgrounds with the Bamboo Union, or they had been convicted of fraud, the statement said.
Three suspects were arrested in June in an initial round of raids, it said.
In a large operation conducted last month, police arrested more than 20 other suspects in Taipei and central Taiwan, it said.
The suspects who collected the money would convert it into cryptocurrency in California and transfer it in batches to Taiwan, China or Cambodia, it said.
They would not carry much cash when flying, making it difficult to track the flow of the cash, it said.
Once a target was identified, the group would dispatch members posing as investment advisers to collect money, police said.
Hsu was not the only target, with communication records showing that Taiwanese living in the US, Japan and Canada were defrauded of more than NT$10 million combined, the task force said.
Based on nearly a year of financial records gathered during the investigation, most of the funds — totaling more than NT$5 billion — were transferred to China, it said.
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