Johanne Liou (劉喬安), a Taiwanese woman who shot to unwanted fame during the Sunflower movement protests in 2014, returned to Taiwan last night after being deported from the US.
She is to stand trial in Taiwan for charges involving embezzlement, fraud and drug crimes.
The Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said it took her into custody at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport and would first question her before transferring her to the New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office.
Photo: Taipei Times
She was arrested upon disembarking a flight from San Francisco that landed shortly before 7pm.
Liou absconded to the US in 2019 after jumping bail in an embezzlement case, the CIB said.
During her time in the US, Liou was allegedly involved in several drug-related offenses and is currently wanted by five district prosecutors’ offices in Taiwan, it said.
The CIB said it formed a special task force to track her down, working closely with the US Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations and Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO).
Through intelligence sharing between Taiwan and the US, she was apprehended by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Boston in January last year for overstaying her visitor visa in 2019 and remained in the custody of the Boston Field Office’s ERO until yesterday.
The ERO described Liou as a “fugitive, criminal alien wanted for embezzlement, fraud and drug crimes in Taiwan,” ICE said.
The CIB’s liaison offices in the western and eastern US worked together to monitor her appeals process and coordinate her deportation, the bureau said.
Liou allegedly introduced Taiwanese women to a prostitution ring in the US in 2015 and was subsequently barred from leaving Taiwan the same year.
She then became a wanted criminal by the New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office in 2023 for failing to appear in court.
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