Taipei district prosecutors yesterday indicted 26 people, including three business owners, on suspicion of colluding to inflate the prices of allegedly hot stock picks.
Investigators believe that trader Liang Ching-fei (梁慶飛) and businessman Lee Ke-yi (李克毅) led the scheme, reaping NT$2.34 billion (US$71.2 million) in illegal proceeds from mainly Taiwanese investors who bought inflated stocks.
Liang and Lee are among 26 people charged with contravening the Securities and Exchange Act (證券交易法) and other offenses.
Photo copied by Chiu Chun-fu, Taipei Times
Executives of Osema Renewable Energy Tech (歐司瑪再生能源科技), Bolysys Inc (寶利通科技), Ultratracker Tech (艾創科技) and bWatter Tech (鏵德科技) were also indicted.
The operation began in 2022 as a “pump and dump” scheme of stock manipulation, Taipei prosecutors said.
The operators sought out Taiwanese companies facing financial difficulties and touted them as successful firms involved in hot sectors such as artificial intelligence, semiconductors, green energy and self-driving vehicles.
Evidence showed that the owners of the four companies signed agreements to increase their capitalization, changed their sector registration and falsified accounting records to inflate their revenue, prosecutors said.
Liang and Lee instructed the owners to launch publicity campaigns and relaunch their company Web sites to tout their earnings and “flourishing” business prospects, they said.
Lee duped investors by claiming he was a licensed lawyer, which he did by registering a foreign legal firm in Taipei and “borrowing” a license from a Singaporean-Chinese attorney surnamed Yen (顏), they said.
He set up accounts for a property trust, a financial trust and other bank accounts specific for licensed lawyers, misleading investors into thinking he had legitimate representation in legal and financial services, they said.
“After receiving money from investors, Lee would deduct a 3 percent handling and service fee, then transfer the funds to accounts that he and Liang controlled,” they said. “They also gave some of the funds to members of their fraud ring.”
Three company owners were indicted: Chang Wen-yuan (張文遠) of Bolysys, Yu Min-yong (余敏榮) of Ultratracker Tech and Liu Tse-ming (劉哲銘) of bWatter Tech.
As Osema Renewable Energy’s former owner, surnamed Chen (陳), has passed away, prosecutors are not pursuing charges.
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