A man suspected of stealing books throughout Taiwan over more than seven years and reselling them online was arrested on Monday, police said.
Hsiao Wen-chia (蕭文嘉), a 34-year-old man from Changhua County, allegedly stole and resold an estimated 120,000 books during a seven-year criminal career, the Chiayi County Police Bureau said.
Police recovered 4,000 books in Hsiao’s Changhua residence and Hsinchu rental storage in searches executed on Friday last week, bureau officials said, adding that Hsiao confessed to his alleged crimes.
The police believe that Hsiao, a Chinese literature student who dropped out from a public university, stole from franchised bookstores nationwide on a huge scale and fenced stolen volumes via online platforms.
Hsiao was making about NT$100,000 per month from the online sale of stolen books, police said, adding that he and his wife owned two houses, two cars and two motorcycles.
However, police said Hsiao’s wife was completely in the dark, thinking that her husband was in a legitimate wholesale book business.
According to investigators, Hsiao avoided detection by wearing disguises when he committed the alleged crimes, moving books to fill any gaps he made on shelves and leaving his loot in store corners, which he would collect later during store clerks’ moments of inattentiveness.
Bureau officials suspected that spreading his activities nationwide was a conscious strategy by Hsiao to make him more difficult to identify.
Earlier this month, Hsiao stole from a bookstore in Chiayi County specializing in foreign-language materials on the day workers were scheduled to verify the store’s inventory, the officials said.
That same night, bookstore employees found that 60 books were missing and called the police, who reviewed surveillance footage and spotted the book thief wearing a jacket and hat, they said, adding that the man reportedly made three separate runs to the store within an hour.
Investigators soon zeroed in on Hsiao, believing that it was no coincidence that he had two prior probationary sentences related to shoplifting at bookstores, officials said.
When confronted by authorities as thousands of books were discovered in his possession, Hsiao confessed and blamed “bad luck” for stealing on the wrong day, police said.
Hsiao was in the process of hiring part-time workers to catalogue his inventory, police said.
Lee Chien-fen (李茜芬), a professional in the bookstore industry, said that many national bookstore chains were aware that a prolific thief was selling stolen books online — often with shop labels still on the covers and at times with giveaway consumer electronics — but lacked sufficient evidence to identify the culprit.
“Store managers are held responsible for their inventories, and many were handed demerits or even lost their end-of-year bonuses... We all breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing he was caught,” she said.
Hsiao’s case has been referred to the Chiayi District Prosecutors’ Office, where he is expected to be charged with larceny.
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