Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom.
Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051).
The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on Dec. 3 last year, she found that she was part of a tour group of eight passengers, five of whom were young men.
Photo: Wang Chieh, Taipei Times
The victim said they were instructed to download the Telegram app and send their “basic information” — including a photograph of their passports and plane tickets — to an unidentified third party.
When the plane landed in Bangkok early the next day, the group of eight was taken away in two cars, the victim said, adding that they changed vehicles three times during the trip and passed multiple checkpoints where soldiers inspected their passports.
The vehicles crossed the Thailand-Cambodia border hours later, and the eight were forced into another car by armed soldiers, the victim said, adding that they were finally placed in a four-story building with two others.
The victim said she and two elderly women were told to call their families and deliver NT$600,000 in ransom, adding that if they failed to follow instructions, they would be buried, poisoned, or sent off to blood farms.
The victim said that when the scamming group relocated and passed by a hospital, she thought she was about to be harvested for organs.
The victim, held for 17 days, shared her experience in the hope that more Taiwanese would not share her fate.
The police said they had not received information about the five young men in the group.
The victim said the young men were forced to work for the scammers by tricking people into investing in cryptocurrencies, adding that they were told they would not be released until they had made US$500,000 for the group.
Separately, a young woman traveling to Thailand was also tricked into leaving with someone who flirted with her after leaving her hotel, the police said, adding that the young woman was later ransomed for more than NT$1 million, paid for by her husband.
The police said another woman, a resident of southern Taiwan, was tricked and only released after paying a ransom of US$100,000.
Magician Wang Yuan-chao (王元照), who helped facilitate negotiations between the parties, said younger victims were often sent off to fraud factories, while middle-aged and elderly victims were usually directly ransomed as they were unable to produce value for the scam groups.
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