The Aviation Police Bureau (APB) on Wednesday said that it recently persuaded a Taiwanese woman not to go to Cambodia, having determined she was targeted by a human-trafficking honey trap scheme.
Chang Tsung-lung (張驄瀧), a squad chief in the bureau’s Criminal Investigation Division, said the bureau was notified of the case by Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport Services on March 3.
Chang said the ground crew identified a Taiwanese woman, surnamed Shih (施), as a potential scam victim while she was about to take an international flight from Terminal 1 at the airport.
Photo: Wang Chieh, Taipei Times
The crew noticed that although Shih was embarking on her first-ever trip abroad, she only had a one-way ticket from Taipei to Phnom Penh via a layover in Kuala Lumpur.
Airport personnel suspected Shih might be victim of a job scam and was about to fall into the hands of human traffickers in Cambodia, Chang said.
As a result, APB officers approached Shih at the Terminal 1 security checkpoint to assess the situation. The officers eventually determined that the Taiwanese woman befriended a man known as “A-hsing” online and was traveling to Cambodia to meet him, Chang said.
A-hsing apparently lured Shih into a honey trap with sweet talk, persuading her to travel to Cambodia under the pretense of exploring job opportunities, and assured her that all expenses for the trip and subsequent tours would be fully covered, he said.
APB officers used her phone to call A-hsing, who claimed to be in Phnom Penh and Shih’s boyfriend. However, when asked to provide identification, details of his relationship with Shih and an explanation of why he wanted her to go to Cambodia, A-hsing was unable to do so, he added.
After determining that the trip was a honey trap scheme, officers informed Shih about similar scams and human trafficking cases to dissuade her, Chang said, adding that Shih ultimately decided against flying to Cambodia, and the APB later contacted her family before escorting her home.
The APB would continue to follow up with the case, Chang said.
There has been a steady stream of cases of scammers luring victims to Cambodia with promises of high-paying jobs, the APB said, urging the public to remain cautious when encountering such offers.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS