Losses from investment scams made up the largest proportion of the total money lost due to fraud in the fourth quarter of last year, with many victims being women older than 50, Ministry of the Interior data showed.
Taiwanese lost NT$37.19 billion (US$1.23 billion) to fraud in the final quarter of last year, with 1,677 people losing more than NT$5 million to fraud, or 3.1 percent of the 54,113 reported incidents, National Police Agency (NPA) Deputy Director-General Chen Yong-li (陳永利) told a news conference on Friday. That amounted to NT$21.16 billion in losses, or 56.9 percent of the total losses, he said.
Most of the incidents involving large losses were investment scams, with most of the 1,242 victims of investment fraud being women, at 821 people, almost twice the number of male victims at 421 people, he said, adding that 516 of those cases involved women older than 50.
Photo courtesy of the police via CNA
About 32 percent of the victims, 394 people, were retired, homemakers or did not have a job, Chen said.
The ministry report divided the fraud incidents into three categories: investment scams, romance cons and “authority” impersonation schemes.
In investment scams, criminals often find victims by buying advertisements on Facebook or other social media platforms to eventually get them to sign up for an “investing group” on the messaging app Line, the report said.
Messages in the group seek to give a target the impression they are profiting from investment tips, and the victims are deceived into wiring fraudsters money to buy into the schemes, it said.
In romance cons, criminals use fake profiles to befriend people on dating sites or social media to attempt to defraud them, it said.
Fraudsters also attempt to scam people by impersonating staff from banks, police or local government officials, contacting the victims by telephone or text message, it said.
In the scams, the impersonator claims someone is using the victim’s identity to open bank accounts, or that there had been unusual activity on the accounts, which is then followed by calls from people claiming to be police officers or judicial officials saying they are investigating money laundering or other fraud.
They then attempt to get the victim to give them their bank account details or other personal information, the report said.
It takes victims of investment scams about two months to realize they have been defrauded, while in romance cons, it could take up to 270 days before a victim knows they have been scammed, NPA Anti-Fraud Center researcher Wang Chung-sheng (王琮聖) said.
In the cases of the third category, it could be up to two years, Wang said.
In investment fraud, victims, some of whom put up their homes or other property as collateral, usually discover the con faster, as they are drained of money quicker, he said.
In some romance scams, fraudsters claim to be a physician from the US or a member of the military, he said.
In the military con, the person would sometimes tell the victim they had been injured in the line of duty to gain sympathy and convince the victim to transfer their money or valuables as part of a long-term scheme, he added.
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