A retired professor has been indicted on charges of fraud and forgery for allegedly using students’ information to receive money related to research projects during his tenure at National Taiwan University (NTU), the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday.
Huang Liang-hsiung (黃良雄) allegedly obtained millions of dollars in funding for university research projects by fraudulently listing the names of his students and their relatives as research assistants and employees, prosecutors said.
The research projects, which Huang either led or co-led, were commissioned by NTU, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University — formerly National Chiao Tung University before its merger with National Yang-Ming University — and government agencies, prosecutors said.
Photo: Chien Li-chung, Taipei Times
Huang allegedly assigned a doctoral student surnamed Chang (張) to obtain personal and bank account information of Huang’s students and aides, who were then fraudulently listed on the projects as research assistants or temporary employees, they said.
Prosecutors said that Huang allegedly asked Chang to contact a person surnamed Chiu (邱) at a private company to issue invoices and quotations that were fraudulently used to claim more than NT$400,000 (US$12,547) in funding for research projects.
Huang made nearly NT$3.82 million from projects commissioned by the universities and government agencies from August 2009 to March 2019, prosecutors said.
Chang, Chiu and the individuals who consented to pose as Huang’s research assistants all confessed to unlawful practices and were granted deferred prosecution, prosecutors said.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its