Miaoli County police on Thursday questioned 23 people who were arrested a day earlier on suspicion of running a sex trade ring.
Investigators identified 38-year-old Lai Chen-lun (賴震倫) as the suspected ringleader.
Lai is the director of the China Unification Promotion Party’s (CUPP) Miaoli County chapter.
Miaoli police and judicial units on Wednesday raided 25 locations in the county and detained 23 people: 10 suspected members of organized crime and 13 Thai women allegedly working in the sex business.
Most of the women have overstayed their tourist visas, said Chen Chien-min (陳健民), deputy squad leader of the Miaoli County Police Department’s criminal investigation section.
Prosecutors said that Lai and nine other men would face charges of international human trafficking, organized crime and drug use.
They might also be indicted on charges of blackmail, coercion, assault and destruction of private property, as they are suspected of trashing shops using metal rods and wooden bats to force store owners to pay protection money, prosecutors said.
Police surveillance found that one of Lai’s subordinates started a relationship with a Thai woman, whom the group recruited to work in the sex trade with promises that she would make good money, Chen said.
After she started working, the woman “flaunted” pictures of her earnings on Facebook, with photographs showing her holding money and rows of Taiwanese banknotes laid out on a table, police said.
It was a way to entice young Thai women to come to Taiwan on a tourist visa and then link up with her and Lai’s ring to work in the sex business in Miaoli, Chen said.
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