The Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) has teamed up with Line to crack down on investment scam rings, identifying 45,000 high-risk mobile numbers and deactivating 73,000 suspicious Line accounts.
Police carried out a large-scale, systematic investigation using online surveillance, the CIB said, adding that it would continue blocking any suspicious accounts identified as high-risk for scam activity.
The operation is expected to continue until July 7, the bureau added.
Photo: Chiu Chun-fu, Taipei Times
There has been an uptick of public complaints recently of people joining investment-related Line groups, only for the group to disappear or the members’ account names to change to “unknown,” CIB High-Tech Crime Center Director-General Rufus Lin (林建隆) told a news conference yesterday.
Police warned that these are signs the group is likely run by a scam ring, urging the public to stay alert, not rejoin such groups and refrain from providing personal information or investing money.
Scam groups first post ads on Facebook, Instagram or YouTube offering investments such as stocks or cryptocurrency, Lin said.
Once users click on the ads, they are invited to join a Line group, where scammers impersonate investment advisers or experts and use manipulative language to deceive victims into transferring funds, he added.
Scam artists might create multiple Line groups and use bots to post the same messages across different chats, duping people into believing they have joined a friendly investment network, he said.
The CIB created a task force in early February to work with Line to crack down on such investment scammers, Lin said.
Scammers regularly post on investment groups with stock analyses before market opening or pictures of fun gatherings, and offer stock investment classes to deceive victims, police said.
The CIB investigated thousands of Line accounts suspected of fraudulent activity, finding that the accounts were often registered and deleted within a short time frame.
The bureau previously targeted the backend of scams by identifying low-level operatives and financial flows; however, this latest crackdown aims to limit scam groups’ operations at their source, it said.
The CIB said it would continue cooperating with various companies and industries to crack down on scams and create a safe online environment, protecting the public’s financial safety.
Article 33 of the Fraud Crime Hazard Prevention Act (詐欺犯罪危害防制條例) mandates that operators restrict access to or remove content suspected of fraudulent activity from their platform once they have been notified by the competent authorities.
Line has been systematically removing suspicious accounts since the middle of this month, the company said in a statement.
The company made an ongoing commitment to supporting the government’s anti-fraud initiatives, and pledged to strengthen its internal risk detection and monitoring systems for abnormal behavior, the statement said.
It would continue cross-platform and cross-industry collaborations between the public and private sectors to crack down on fraud, it added.
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