Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) officials yesterday said they have arrested nine people on suspicion of human trafficking, and rescued nine Taiwanese.
The suspects are being accused of luring Taiwanese to Cambodia with lucrative job offers, before forcing them to work in their fraud operations.
The criminal ring was allegedly led by Lee Chen-hao (李振豪), who is suspected of being a boss of a Taipei chapter of the Bamboo Union triad, the officials said.
Photo: Chiu Chun-fu, Taipei Times
Lee and two men working for him have been placed under judicial detention pending further investigation, they said.
The CIB, with support from the National Police Agency, on Tuesday raided a business run by alleged members of the gang on Linsen N Road in Taipei and detained six suspected members of the ring.
Police also found modified handguns, bullets, computers, money ledgers, employment contracts and other documents linking the suspects to the trafficking operation.
Lee and other members of the ring are facing charges of fraud, illegal confinement and organized crime, CIB officials said.
The CIB’s investigation of the criminal ring began in May, when it received a call from a person being held hostage by the criminals. Police raided a hotel in Taipei and found three people confined to a room waiting to be transported to Cambodia.
Police at the time arrested three suspects, led by a man surnamed Lin (林), who allegedly worked with Lee in the human trafficking operation.
A follow-up investigation led to this week’s arrests, while police are cooperating with Cambodian authorities to track down other Taiwanese who might be linked to the case.
“Lee in November last year linked up with ‘snakeheads’ in Cambodia to set up conduits for human trafficking. He and members of his gang then put advertisements on social media platforms, offering up to NT$50,000 to NT$60,000 a month to work in Cambodia,” the CIB said.
The jobs offered included working in casinos, lending money and acting in adult films, it said.
However, the job applicants were confined to hotel rooms and had their identification cards confiscated before being forced to sign employment contracts. They were then taken to Cambodia, where local criminals and colluding Taiwanese took them to a place where they were forced to work in a telecom scam headed by Taiwanese, it said.
Victims who refused to cooperate were beaten and even tortured with electricity, the CIB said.
The profits generated by the criminal operation were split evenly between the Taiwanese and Cambodian groups, it said.
Eighty-two Taiwanese have been taken to Cambodia this way and nine have been rescued so far, the CIB said, adding that efforts are ongoing to find and repatriate the remaining victims.
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) today condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the Czech officials confirmed that Chinese agents had surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March last year. Czech Military Intelligence director Petr Bartovsky yesterday said that Chinese operatives had attempted to create the conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, going as far as to plan a collision with her car. Hsiao was vice president-elect at the time. The MAC said that it has requested an explanation and demanded a public apology from Beijing. The CCP has repeatedly ignored the desires
The Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant’s license has expired and it cannot simply be restarted, the Executive Yuan said today, ahead of national debates on the nuclear power referendum. The No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County was disconnected from the nation’s power grid and completely shut down on May 17, the day its license expired. The government would prioritize people’s safety and conduct necessary evaluations and checks if there is a need to extend the service life of the reactor, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference. Lee said that the referendum would read: “Do
RSS