The National Immigration Agency (NIA) yesterday said it arrested 38 suspects accused of buying or making and selling fake residency permits and other forms of identification.
The suspects, including 34 buyers of fake documents, were arrested over the past few months and have been referred to the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office for investigation into suspected forgery, fraud and organized crime, the agency said in a statement.
The NIA said it learned of the forgery ring through social media advertisements offering to “make, sell and mail” Republic of China (Taiwan) identification cards, resident permits and national health insurance cards.
Photo provided by the National Immigration Agency
An investigation found that the ads were being posted by a forgery operation run by an undocumented Vietnamese migrant worker identified as Mei (梅), the agency said in a statement.
Mei, who is in her 30s, was allegedly running the operation from an apartment in Taipei, along with three other suspects — another undocumented Vietnamese and a transnational married couple, the agency said.
The four suspects, one of whom is a Taiwanese man, were allegedly forging the documents using high-end computers, photocopiers and laminators, the agency added.
Mei was allegedly charging NT$3,000 to NT$8,000 (US$100 to US$266.76) for each document, and over a two-year period, the ring had allegedly earned about NT$10 million from a large number of undocumented migrant workers, it said.
The NIA had surveilled the four suspects for about eight months, before arresting them in a raid on the apartment on July 28, it said.
During that period, the agency arrested 34 undocumented migrant workers, who had obtained forged documents from the suspects, it said.
The NIA said that the maximum fine for knowingly employing an undocumented migrant worker is NT$750,000.
About 70,331 undocumented migrant workers live in Taiwan, 39,927 of whom are from Vietnam, Ministry of Labor data showed.
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