Taiwan Railway Corp yesterday said that it helped retrieve NT$4 million (US$132,000) that a Vietnamese passenger left on a train on Wednesday, the largest amount that the railway company has so far encountered.
The incident occurred on commuter train No. 3258, which operates in the section between Ershuei (二水) Railway Station in Changhua County to Chaojhou (潮州) Railway Station.
The conductor received a report from the passenger service center at Tainan Railway Station that a foreign passenger had left a black bag on the train, which had cash inside.
Photo: Yang Chin-cheng, Taipei Times
The conductor subsequently located the bag in the second car.
As the bag contained a large amount of cash, it was delivered to the railway police as soon as the train arrived at Tainan’s Sinying (新營) Station at 8:55pm.
The police found that the bag contained about NT$4 million.
They contacted the owner, a Vietnamese man surnamed Hu (胡), and both parties agreed to meet last night in the Sinying Station to turn over the lost funds.
A preliminary investigation by police showed that Hu is in the business of stone trading, and he carried a large amount of cash for business purposes.
He had asked his brother-in-law to assist him in explaining to the police and pledged full cooperation.
Prior to the incident on Wednesday, the largest amount of cash lost on a train was left by former Democratic Progressive Party legislator Chen Ming-wen (陳明文).
Chen left luggage with NT$3 million in cash on a high-speed rail train in 2019.
He said he borrowed the funds from his sister to help his son open a store in the Philippines.
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