The High Court yesterday upheld a conviction and 10-year prison sentence of businessman Chang Chih-kai (張智凱) for defrauding 25 investors in land development projects in Hsinchu County and Taoyuan.
In rejecting Chang’s appeal, the High Court found him guilty of running an illegal deposit-taking business in contravention of the Banking Act (銀行法) and, along with the prison term, it fined Chang NT$30 million (US$965,499).
Chang was originally convicted by the Hsinchu District Court in July last year, receiving a 10-year prison sentence.
Yesterday’s ruling can still be appealed.
Prosecutors said that Chang set up Da Sin Tong Asset Management Co and three other real-estate development firms in Hsinchu in his wife’s name, but that he was the person who ran the businesses.
From 2012 to 2015 Chang organized investment seminars in Hsinchu County and Taoyuan to promote a number of real-estate projects, some involving the rezoning of farmland, and promising investors profits of up to 36 percent.
Through the seminars, Chang got 25 investors for these schemes, whose investments ranged from NT$200,000 to NT$52 million.
In total he raised NT$223 million, the ruling said.
Chang gained their confidence by producing signed “certificates of investment” and “cooperation agreements” from one of his companies, but investors later discovered that the projects did not proceed as promised and demanded their money back, it added.
Chang was arrested in October 2017 and he was indictment in February last year.
BIOTECH FRAUD
In a separate case, Taipei prosecutors yesterday indicted Kuo Yu-chang (郭雨蒼), the former chairman of Taipei-based Gsun-Yi Biotech Co, for alleged breaches of the Securities and Exchange Act (證券交易法).
Kuo and other Gsun-Yi Biotech executives in 2015 enticed investors to buy their company’s shares by falsifying accounting records and manipulating the share price, prosecutors said.
The executives made NT$2 billion of illegal profits through the scheme, of which NT$345.9 million was made by selling Gsun-Yi Biotech shares after Kuo had highlighted the company’s joint ventures on proprietary biotechnology with Chinese companies and talked of expanding production in China, prosecutors said.
The other executives had already been charged with making illegal profits by falsifying accounting records and manipulating share prices.
Kuo and the other executives colluded with nine other companies and unlicensed securities investment firms to promote the company’s shares to investors and to inflate the company’s earnings potential, prosecutors said.
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