A Taiwanese couple who own tea shops in Nantou County and one of their employees have been indicted on charges of passing off Vietnamese tea as Taiwanese to consumers in 2021 and last year, the Nantou District Prosecutors’ Office said earlier this month.
In a statement on July 7, Nantou prosecutors said the three are suspected of violating the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法) and the Criminal Code by intending to defraud others and falsely marking or labeling merchandise.
The couple, a man surnamed Ou (歐) and a woman surnamed Hsu (許), ran multiple tea shops in the county’s Mingjian Township (名間).
Photo courtesy of the Nantou District Prosecutors’ Office via CNA
They bought imported Vietnamese tea from a supplier surnamed Chen (陳) and resold it as Taiwanese tea from September 2021 to May last year, prosecutors said.
Ou and Hsu would order an employee surnamed Lo (羅) to put the imported tea into vacuum-packed bags with Taiwanese tea labels, then they sold the tea to consumers via Line, Facebook and Shopee at a price of NT$1,000 to NT$1,800 per 600g, prosecutors said.
Their illicit earnings totaled NT$1.4 million (US$44,817), prosecutors said, adding that Chen was not aware of what the couple were doing.
In May last year, the police received a complaint from a consumer, and prosecutors launched an investigation into the case.
They set up a task force with the Criminal Investigation Corps under the county’s police bureau, the Food and Drug Administration’s central Taiwan center and the county’s public health bureau to help with the probe.
Several officials raided the couple’s tea shops as well as their warehouse on May 31 last year, and confiscated six types of prepacked tea, weighing a total of 584.4kg, which were confirmed as imported after being examined.
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