A 35-year-old man whose parents accused him of deceiving them into giving him cash by pretending to need it for university costs was found not guilty of fraud by the High Court on Wednesday.
The man, surnamed Kuo (郭), had deceived his parents, but there was not enough evidence to show that he took NT$4.35 million (US$156,082), as the parents claimed, or that such an amount ever existed, the court said.
The verdict cited the Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office as saying that Kuo’s parents gave him a total of NT$1.85 million in 2007 and 2008 under the false pretext that he was an electronic engineering student at National Taiwan University.
Kuo told his parents that he had been accepted into the university’s doctoral program as its youngest candidate in history and needed money for extra classes and an apprenticeship, the verdict said.
From 2009 to 2011, Kuo was accused of taking NT$2.5 million by claiming to have been accepted into interior design and architecture doctoral programs in New York City and Canada, it said.
Kuo’s parents discovered that they had been deceived and filed a criminal complaint with the prosecutors’ office, which took up the case, it said.
The defendant was found guilty on two charges of fraud by the Taoyuan District Court, which sentenced him to 12 months in prison, commutable to a NT$360,000 fine.
Kuo appealed to the High Court, which ruled that the testimonies of his parents were inconsistent and that their accounts of the cash that changed hands were not specific.
No evidence was presented that showed that the money ever existed, it said.
The ruling can be appealed.
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