A senior manager at Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海) has admitted to stealing thousands of smartphones, prosecutors said yesterday, in a racket that reportedly made more than US$700,000.
Hon Hai, known in China as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles products for international brands such as Apple Inc, Sony Corp and Nokia Oyj. It employs about 1 million workers at its factories across China.
The Taiwanese deputy sales manager worked at the company’s factory in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, which assembles products such as Apple’s iPhone 6. The manager, identified in local media reports by the surname Tsai (蔡), was questioned on Thursday before being released on NT$500,000 bail.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
Prosecutors said thousands of phones were stolen in the scam, which they believe involved a network of accomplices.
Local media reported that between 4,000 and 5,000 smartphones, including the iPhone 6, had gone missing and were sold in China for a total of about US$760,000. TV news channel TVBS said the manager shipped the stolen phones out of the Zhengzhou factory in a container.
“He admitted to stealing smartphones from a Foxconn factory in China last year during questioning yesterday,” prosecutors said.
“We suspect that there are accomplices in China and might request judicial assistance from Chinese authorities for further investigation,” a spokeswoman for the New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office said.
The company reported the case to the authorities following an internal audit, she added.
Hon Hai yesterday denied local media reports that thousands of iPhone 6 handsets had been stolen from one of its factories in China. The company also denied the stolen phones had been smuggled out of the factory in a container, and said that it has a tight audit and control mechanism in place.
In a statement, Hon Hai said there was an incident of theft at one of its China plants, but it occurred in 2013 and involved pre-production phone models that were manufactured for testing purposes. It said the model in question was not the iPhone 6, but it did not specify which phone was stolen.
Last year, five former Hon Hai employees were charged with breach of trust in Taiwan for allegedly soliciting NT$160 million (US$5.1 million) in kickbacks from suppliers in exchange for clearing quality checks and buying their equipment.
The company said at the time that it planned to seek compensation from the suppliers involved in the case and called for the accused to be “severely punished according to the law.”
Despite the news about stolen iPhones, shares in Hon Hai, the world’s biggest contract electronics maker, increased 2.09 percent to close at NT$93.0 yesterday in Taipei trading, outperforming the main bourse, which rose 0.13 percent from Thursday.
Additional reporting by CNA
When an apartment comes up for rent in Germany’s big cities, hundreds of prospective tenants often queue down the street to view it, but the acute shortage of affordable housing is getting scant attention ahead of today’s snap general election. “Housing is one of the main problems for people, but nobody talks about it, nobody takes it seriously,” said Andreas Ibel, president of Build Europe, an association representing housing developers. Migration and the sluggish economy top the list of voters’ concerns, but analysts say housing policy fails to break through as returns on investment take time to register, making the
NOT TO WORRY: Some people are concerned funds might continue moving out of the country, but the central bank said financial account outflows are not unusual in Taiwan Taiwan’s outbound investments hit a new high last year due to investments made by contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and other major manufacturers to boost global expansion, the central bank said on Thursday. The net increase in outbound investments last year reached a record US$21.05 billion, while the net increase in outbound investments by Taiwanese residents reached a record US$31.98 billion, central bank data showed. Chen Fei-wen (陳斐紋), deputy director of the central bank’s Department of Economic Research, said the increase was largely due to TSMC’s efforts to expand production in the US and Japan. Investments by Vanguard International
WARNING SHOT: The US president has threatened to impose 25 percent tariffs on all imported vehicles, and similar or higher duties on pharmaceuticals and semiconductors US President Donald Trump on Wednesday suggested that a trade deal with China was “possible” — a key target in the US leader’s tariffs policy. The US in 2020 had already agreed to “a great trade deal with China” and a new deal was “possible,” Trump said. Trump said he expected Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to visit the US, without giving a timeline for his trip. Trump also said that he was talking to China about TikTok, as the US seeks to broker a sale of the popular app owned by Chinese firm ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動). Trump last week said that he had
STRUGGLING TO SURVIVE: The group is proposing a consortium of investors, with Tesla as the largest backer, and possibly a minority investment by Hon Hai Precision Nissan Motor Co shares jumped after the Financial Times reported that a high-level Japanese group has drawn up plans to seek investment from Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc to aid the struggling automaker. The group believes the electric vehicle (EV) maker is interested in acquiring Nissan’s plants in the US, the newspaper reported, citing people it did not identify. The proposal envisions a consortium of investors, with Tesla as the largest backer, but also includes the possibility of a minority investment by Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) to prevent a full takeover by the Apple supplier, the report said. The group is
RSS