A scratch-card lottery scam bilked hundreds of millions of NT dollars from unsuspecting victims who thought Lady Luck was on their side, investigators in central Taiwan said yesterday.
Prosecutors and police yesterday questioned more than 40 suspects and witnesses in the scam. As of press time, the questioning was still in progress, though the Taichung County Police Bureau said officers have identified more than 10 suspects in the case.
The scam worked by leading ticket buyers into believing they had won a prize, and then asking them to pay taxes on the prize before collecting the winnings.
In the scam, which began in Taiwan five or six years ago, operators would issue fake scratch-card lottery tickets. When someone scratches and wins -- which is designed to happen frequently -- the victim dials a phone number on the lottery ticket to claim their prize.
The company congratulates the "winner" and asks him to pay a tax and handling fee before getting an enormous prize, often worth "millions of dollars."
The "prize winner" then sends the money and gets nothing back.
In the Taichung case yesterday, as in many similar cases, the phone calls were forwarded from one number to another several times over, prosecutors said. Investigators traced the calls to a coastal region of China.
The Taichung District Prosecutors' Office has been monitoring the scam ring for roughly six months and recently learned that major suspects in the case had returned to Taiwan from China and Southeast Asia.
Yesterday morning, prosecutors and more than 100 policemen raided 42 locations in Taichung County and Changhua County, according to the police.
A sizeable number of bankbooks and forged ID cards were seized as evidence. Police said the scam ring used fake IDs to apply for telephone numbers and open dummy bank accounts.
Meanwhile, the criminal investigation unit at the Kaohsiung Municipal Police Department held a press conference yesterday to highlight examples of the crime.
In an April case, according to officer Chi Tsung-yao (
To earn the teacher's trust, the company sent her a check for NT$300,000. The scam artists also told the teacher that they would invest another NT$300,000 in foreign high-tech industry shares and Hong Kong horse-racing on her behalf.
According to the police, the scam artists then told the teacher that her NT$300,000 investment generated a profit of NT$27 million -- which in turn required her to pay more taxes, handling fees, a deposit and membership fees.
The teacher paid NT$4 million. The company later sent her a NT$12 million check, but asked for another NT$6 million.
Short of money, the teacher tried to borrow money from her colleague, who warned her friend she was likely being conned and urged her to report the matter to police.
The teacher's prize checks bounced in May, confirming her fears that she had been duped.
"The crime takes advantage of people's greed," Chi said. "The deceivers first ask you to pay a sum of money relatively small compared to the prize they promise you. Once you pay, they raise the price. And in order not to lose the prize and the money you had paid, you get deeper into it."
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