Amendments to the Fraud Crime Hazard Prevention Act (詐欺犯罪危害防制條例), which obtained preliminary approval from the legislature’s Internal Affairs Committee, seek to increase penalties and expedite proceedings to better protect people’s rights, Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) said yesterday.
The amended act would add clauses allowing prosecutors to request that financial institutions or providers of virtual banking services flag the accounts, credit cards and virtual assets of alleged scammers and suspend all transactional functions associated with them.
This would prevent criminals from stealing victims’ assets or transferring illicit proceeds to offshore accounts, Liu said.
Photo: CNA
The amendment would increase the severity of criminal sentences for high-sum scammers and lower the floor for the definition of a high-sum scammer from NT$5 million to NT$1 million (US$158,599 to US$31,720).
High-sum scamming would be punishable by three to 10 years imprisonment, along with a maximum fine of NT$30 million, the amendment says.
Scammers who have scammed others of NT$10 million or more would face a minimum of five and a maximum of 12 years in prison, alongside a fine of NT$300 million, while those scamming others NT$100 million or more would serve a minimum of seven years in prison and be fined a maximum of NT$500 million, it says.
To facilitate victims’ recovering their assets, the amendment states that criminals who have turned themselves in after committing fraud would be eligible for a lighter sentence if they have reached a settlement with the victim to return all of their money within six months.
The opulence of fraudsters’ lifestyles before their arrest and the time it took to return the funds would be among the factors on which courts base the severity of the sentence, the amendment says.
Committee convener Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wang Mei-hui (王美惠) said that the amendments would not need to undergo party caucus negotiations before being submitted to the legislative floor.
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