The suspected leaders of two human trafficking rings have been indicted for a second time after more of their victims were rescued in Cambodia and returned to Taiwan.
The groups have been accused of luring 88 Taiwanese to the Southeast Asian country with lucrative job offers, only to sell them into forced labor.
The alleged ringleaders, surnamed Lin (林) and Lee (李), were among nine suspects indicted in September last year after 22 victims were returned to Taiwan.
They were charged with human trafficking, attempted fraud, obstructing freedom, contravening the Organized Crime Prevention Act (組織犯罪防制條例) and deceiving people to travel abroad for profit.
Taipei prosecutors on Wednesday filed similar charges against Lin and Lee after another 30 victims returned home.
The prosecutors did not divulge when the victims arrived in Taiwan.
Neither prosecutors nor law enforcement authorities offered any details about the three dozen victims still unaccounted for.
Starting in late 2021, the two groups placed recruitment ads on Facebook offering high-paying customer service jobs in the gaming sector in Cambodia to lure unemployed people there, the prosecutors said.
Once the victims arrived in Cambodia, they were sold to telecom fraud rings for US$17,000 to US$18,000 per person, the prosecutors said, adding that the fraud rings operated mainly out of industrial parks in Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville.
The fraud rings held the victims against their will and forced them to engage in telecoms fraud, they said.
Those who did not comply or performed poorly were beaten, given electric shocks, locked up in a confined space or asked for a high ransom, the prosecutors said.
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