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.
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
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
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