The Taoyuan District Court recently issued an arrest warrant for Yu Kuang-te (游光德), a lawyer accused of masterminding a NT$147.77 million (US$3.59 million) fraud ring, after he jumped bail, the court said yesterday.
Yu was declared a fugitive on March 25, the court confirmed following a report by online media outlet Knews, which reported that Yu might have fled to China via Penghu on March 22, citing anonymous sources.
The court said it was first notified by the Electronic Monitoring Center (EMC) -- the agency responsible for tracking defendants -- at 5:45 pm on March 22 that Yu’s monitoring bracelet had been removed, triggering an alert at 4 pm that day.
Photo: Screen grab from the Internet
The EMC said at the time that the tracking device resumed normal signal transmission after a system reset, but Yu remained unaccounted for, according to the court.
At 10:30 am the following day, the EMC confirmed that Yu’s monitoring bracelet had lost communication and the surveillance mobile phone assigned to him had been turned off, leading to the assumption that he had absconded, the court said.
The court said it confiscated Yu’s bail of NT$2.5 million on March 24 and filed a complaint against him for jumping bail on March 26, believing him to have fled, though there is no record of him leaving the country.
Yu, 35, was charged on Oct. 24, 2024, with aggravated fraud and money laundering.
Taoyuan prosecutors alleged he led a syndicate involving two Bank of Taiwan employees that defrauded at least 179 victims of NT$147.77 million.
Prosecutors are seeking a 13-year sentence for Yu, and prison terms of nine years and six years for the two bank employees, respectively.
Yu attempted to fly to South Korea on Aug. 27, 2024 -- after Taiwan High Court remanded the prosecutors’ detention request to the district court for reconsideration -- but was arrested at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, according to prosecutors.
Although Yu was subsequently taken into custody following that arrest, the district court granted his release on bail two months later, subject to residency restrictions and a ban on overseas travel.
He had been subject to electronic monitoring since February.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS