More than 100 Taiwanese men have recently fallen victim to scams in which they give money to women who seduce them over the phone, police said.
The cases came to light after Kaohisung police and the Criminal Investigation Bureau last week arrested nine alleged members of a phone fraud ring, allegedly operated by a criminal syndicate headed by a man surnamed Liu (劉).
The syndicate was based in China, but has couriers to pick up money and female go-betweens in Taiwan, police said.
In many of the cases, victims believed a tragic story told to them by a woman on the phone, such as that they were destitute or had to pay big medical bills for sick family members, police said.
Once the victim has fallen for the story, they do what they can to help out their “newfound love,” including putting their houses up for collateral or taking out bank loans, the police added. However, the men end up with nothing but an empty bank account and, for many, a broken heart.
“Taiwanese men are easy prey for these phone sex scams,” a policeman said, shaking his head.
According to police reports, more than 100 people were taken advantage of in the phone sex scam, of which most were men over the age of 50, divorced, widowed, or who had little experience with relationships.
The police said the increasing number of men falling for such scams are desperately looking for love and are easily exploited by a charming woman who calls them several times a day and showers them with affection. Victims think they have found their “dream girl,” and many were willing to do everything for the object of their desire, police said.
Information from the police indicated a number of victims were duped out of more than NT$1 million (US$34,000) and that the majority of them were retired civil servants. One victim was a professor at a medical university in Taipei who, even after police had informed him of the scam, still would not believe the girl who had been his “mistress” for about six months was a member of a phone fraud gang, and he was still considering lending her more money, the police said.
However, Liu was quoted by the police as saying that it is becoming more difficult to entrap and gain the trust of these lonely men, adding that female syndicate agents often have to continuously engage their mark on the phone for months, or even a year, to successfully extract money from them.
For some men, talking on the phone was not enough and they would insist on meeting the girl for sex, to prove that they were really in love, Liu was quoted as saying, adding that the fraud ring was prepared for this eventuality and recruited girls willing to meet the victims to get a bigger payout.
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