The Shilin District Court has ordered two money mules to pay NT$2 million and NT$160,000 (US$63,211 and US$5,057) respectively in connection to a fraud case from 2024 that allegedly led a mother and daughter from Taipei’s Neihu District (内湖) to take their own lives.
After his mother and sister were defrauded of NT$12 million in a false investment scheme, the son, surnamed Tseng (曾), sought NT$4.61 million in compensation in a civil lawsuit against two money mules, surnamed Cheng (鄭) and Yen (顏).
After the mother, surnamed Ning (甯), 55, and daughter, surnamed Tseng (曾), 29, took their own lives in December 2024, police identified 10 suspects in the case.
Photo copied by Cheng Ching-yi, Taipei Times
The two had joined an investment group on Line after finding an advertisement on Facebook posted by fraudsters posing as the Internet-famous financial investment mentors “ZRBros” (柴鼠兄弟), police said.
They were then instructed to download a fake investment app called “Changhong E-Diantong" (長紅E點通), and the fraud group sent mules to collect cash from Ning under the guise of investment payments, the court found.
After Ning’s husband passed away, she supported herself and her two children by running a breakfast shop and managed to save a considerable sum of money, it said, adding that her daughter was an accountant with a promising future.
The mother and daughter lost their savings in the scam, even mortgaging their house to take out an NT$1.7 million loan, the court said.
They transferred money to the fraud ring from July to October 2024 before discovering the scam and reporting it to police in December 2024, one week before their death.
The plaintiff said that Cheng, Yen and several other money mules had collected a total of NT$4.61 million.
As his mother’s heir, he said he assumed her right to claim damages, arguing that the money mules should bear joint and several liability.
Although it was established that the two men were involved in the scheme and had collected funds from Ning and Tseng, there was insufficient evidence to prove that they had coordinated efforts with other money mules, the court said.
They were therefore only found liable for the funds they had personally collected, although the case may be appealed.
The court found that Cheng joined the fraud ring in June 2024 and was responsible for collecting money.
He went to Ning’s residence in Neihu to collect NT$2 million on Aug. 5, 2024, posing as a representative of the investment company, the court said.
Yen joined another fraud ring in September of the same year and used similar methods to collect NT$160,000 from Ning, it found.
Both handed the funds to upstream members to disguise the money trail, it said.
They were not found to have engaged in a joint tortious act under the Civil Code, as it could not be proven that they had coordinated with or assisted each other, the court said.
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