Two brothers from New Taipei City have been arrested on suspicion of purchasing more than NT$250,000 worth of damaged and unauthenticated NT$50 coins at a discount, and then exchanging them at Taipei MRT stations.
The Taipei City Police Department’s Rapid Transit Division on Sunday said that it began an investigation after it was contacted by the MRT operator, which said that “large quantities” of NT$50 coins being used at certain MRT stations were being refused by financial institutions, because of doubts about their authenticity.
Police discovered that the suspects had been using the coins to add value to their MRT cards at the Banqiao, Ximen, Jiangzicui and Xingtian Temple stations since Feb. 12 last year.
Photo copied by Wang Kuan-jen, Taipei Times
After topping up their cards, the suspects applied for cash refunds from station information desks, the department said.
Investigators focused on an incident on Feb. 16 last year, when a man complained to a station worker about a ticket machine not accepting the coins he was using to add money to his iPass card, police said.
Using surveillance camera footage, police identified one of the suspects as a 48-year-old man employed in the tourism industry, surnamed Tsai (蔡). The man’s 45-year-old brother was identified as a suspect soon after.
On March 9 last year, police brought the elder Tsai back for questioning and seized 98 NT$50 coins from his possession after he was spotted by Taipei MRT staff at Jiangzicui Station.
During questioning, the brothers said they had been purchasing the coins from “recycling companies” in Taiwan and China for between 60 and 70 percent of their face value.
The brothers said they had no way of knowing whether they were real or fake, as the companies had told them the coins were retrieved from the bottoms of fountains.
They initially tried to exchange the coins at banks, but were told they would have to pay a fee to authenticate them, so they exchanged them at MRT stations instead.
The brothers exchanged at least 5,148 of the suspect NT$50 coins, with a total value of NT$257,400, police said.
The central bank later determined that only 33 of the coins used by the brothers were counterfeit.
However, police said the brothers had broken the law by using coins of questionable validity, rather than trying to authenticate them.
After completing their investigation, police turned the brothers over to Taipei prosecutors on April 24 on suspicion of fraudulent offenses under Articles 339-1 and 339-2 of the Criminal Code and circulating counterfeit currency. They have not yet been charged.
The authentication process costs NT$0.5 for NT$1 coins, NT$2.5 for NT$10 coins and NT$7 for rarely seen NT$20 coins and NT$50 coins, the central bank said.
‘OBNOXIOUS MAN’: The KMT’s Chen Ching-hui moved into Chung Chia-pin’s path atop the podium and reached for him before he grabbed at her legs with both hands Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chung Chia-pin (鍾佳濱) yesterday said he slipped and lost his balance, and did not know who was around him, after jumping onto the speaker’s podium at the legislature in Taipei. He apologized after a collision with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chen Ching-hui (陳菁徽), who moved to intercept him as he mounted the podium. There was pushing and shoving when the session started in the morning as KMT lawmakers attempted to block access to the podium to shield Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) so he could preside over the session. Video footage showed Chung step on a chair and
Police officers yesterday morning apprehended the prime suspect of a triple homicide case, after raiding the suspect’s hideout in Taichung. They transported the suspect to New Taipei City for questioning and recorded his statement last night. The suspect, identified as a 24-year-old man surnamed Chang (張), is believed to have used his hands to strangle his wife, surnamed Chen (陳), 29, along with his three-year-old son from a previous marriage and his wife’s mother, 69. The three dead bodies were wrapped in blankets when they were discovered inside their apartment in New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重) on Saturday. Chang was holding a
Hungarian Member of Parliament Tompos Marton said he considers Taiwan to be a better alternative to China as a strategic partner. Marton, who is the vice president of the opposition Momentum Party, made the remarks in an interview with the Central News Agency on Sunday. He draped a Republic of China flag across his shoulders to protest Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) visit to the capital city, Budapest, on Thursday last week, and openly voiced support for Taiwan on social media. He said in the interview that he wanted to remind the world that there were alternatives to China, and that “Taiwan has
A female physician at New Taipei City’s Shuang Ho Hospital was bullied and made to work for 32 consecutive hours by a senior colleague while pregnant before later having a miscarriage, an internal investigation found, the hospital said on Monday. The perpetrator has been removed from his post, the hospital said. The attending physician in the hospital’s Medical Imaging Department, identified by the pseudonym Y, earlier on Monday told reporters that she had been bullied by a male senior colleague who arranged shifts in her department. In January, shortly after she became pregnant, Y asked the department director if she could avoid overnight