A woman has been ordered by the Chiayi District Court to pay NT$13.97 million (US$443,774) in civil damages for selling her mobile phone number to scammers who used it to defraud the man who filed suit.
The verdict can be appealed.
According to a civil judgement issued by the court on Friday last week, the woman, surnamed Liao (廖), signed up for a mobile phone number at a telecom store in Chiayi and sold the SIM card to a man who went by the name Chuang Chung-hsin (莊中信) on Aug. 10 last year.
Photo: AP
Chuang’s true identity and age are unknown, and it is unclear how the two met, whether Liao knew he was a scammer or why she sold the phone number, which she did for NT$300.
After obtaining the SIM card, members of the scam ring used it on Aug. 19 last year to call a victim, surnamed Huang (黃), impersonating police officers and financial regulators.
Huang was led to believe that his bank account had suspicious transactions and that he needed to cooperate, and under the scammers’ instructions, he transferred a total of NT$13.97 million to unknown accounts between August and October last year, the court said.
Although Liao did not carry out the fraud herself, the mobile number she sold to Chuang was used to contact the victim, the court said, adding that by providing the number, she had in effect assisted the scammers.
After a police investigation, Liao was prosecuted and found guilty of assisting in fraud.
In July, she was sentenced to 50 days detention, which could be converted to a fine at a rate of NT$1,000 per day.
Huang later filed a civil lawsuit seeking damages.
The information released by the Chiayi court did not mention further details about Chuang or whether the fraud ring has been dismantled.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
BREACH OF CONTRACT: The bus operators would seek compensation and have demanded that the manufacturer replace the chips with ones that meet regulations Two bus operators found to be using buses with China-made chips are to demand that the original manufacturers replace the systems and provide compensation for breach of contract, the Veterans Affairs Council said yesterday. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵) yesterday said that Da Nan Bus Co and Shin-Shin Bus Co Ltd have fielded a total of 82 buses that are using Chinese chips. The bus models were made by Tron-E, while the systems provider was CYE Electronics, Lin said. Lin alleged that the buses were using chips manufactured by Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon Co, which presents a national security risk if the
The National Immigration Agency has banned two Chinese from returning to Taiwan, after they published social media content it described as disrespectful to national sovereignty. The agency imposed a two-month ban on a Chinese man surnamed Liang (梁) and a permanent ban on a woman surnamed Yang (楊), an influencer with 23 million followers, in October last year and last week respectively. Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) yesterday said on the sidelines of a legislative meeting that Chinese visitors to Taiwan are required to comply with the rules and regulations governing their entry permits. The government has handled the ban and
RSS