New Taipei City police have arrested 11 Vietnamese nationals and three Taiwanese for allegedly operating a telephone investment scam targeting Vietnamese.
Police on Monday raided a large metal shed next to a busy night market in Shulin District (樹林), where they arrested seven Vietnamese men and four Vietnamese women, and seized computers, mobile phones and other items used in the operation, Criminal Investigation Bureau officer Hsu Yi-hsiang (許益祥) said on Tuesday.
Hsu said that many of the Vietnamese involved were migrant workers operating illegally.
Investigators believe a Taiwanese man, surnamed Kao (高), 26, was the principal figure in hiring the Vietnamese to work for him and operating the telephone investment scam targeting people in Vietnam, Hsu said.
The group allegedly raked in about NT$20 million (US$663,878) from the scheme over three months, Hsu said.
Kao and the other two Taiwanese suspects paid their Vietnamese employees NT$30,000 per month, he added.
“The 14 suspects are facing pending charges of money laundering, fraud and illegal gambling, along with breaches of the Banking Act (銀行法),” Hsu said, adding that investigators were attempting to verify money transferred into accounts controlled by the group.
The group allegedly used the Vietnamese messaging app Zalo, along with Facebook and other social media, to target Vietnamese, investigators said.
The Vietnamese women working as part of the scheme would then tell their victims how to make money by trading cryptocurrency, playing gambling games and using other fraud techniques to transfer money to accounts controlled by the group, investigators said.
New Taipei City prosecutors and bureau officers said they are cooperating with their counterparts in Vietnam to identify victims of the fraud.
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