Prosecutors on Friday indicted 32 people on fraud and money laundering charges related to the cryptocurrency trading platform ACE Exchange, recommending sentences of at least 20 years in prison for the four primary suspects.
Among those indicted by the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office were ACE Exchange founder David Pan (潘奕彰), his business partner, Lin Keng-hong (林耿宏), and prominent attorney Wang Chen-huan (王晨桓), who served as chairman of the exchange.
Prosecutors estimate that more than 1,200 people were defrauded of an estimated total of NT$800 million (US$24.56 million).
Photo: Hsu Kuo-chen, Taipei Times
Starting in 2019, the suspects encouraged investors to purchase NFTC tokens, bitnature coins, mochange — a token introduced by ACE Exchange — and other tokens, writing white papers and other materials to bolster their legitimacy, prosecutors said.
In their promotional talks, Pan and Lin talked of building ACE Exchange into Asia’s most complete blockchain ecosystem for cryptocurrency trading, but many investors saw the value of their tokens go into a tailspin.
The investors said they could not convert them back to New Taiwan dollars as promised and filed complaints to seek a judicial investigation.
While advertising through various media for the tokens, the suspects manipulated the prices on their exchanges to attract investors, prosecutors said.
The suspects sold tokens and other blockchain products at total proceeds of at least NT$2.2 billion, then instructed others to hide cash in different locations, in one case purchasing real estate in Yilan County, prosecutors said.
About NT$43 million was transferred to Wang, who reinjected NT$26 million back into the exchange to bolster prices, they added.
Prosecutors recommended prison sentences of at least 20 years for four of the primary suspects, including Pan and Lin, based on the scale of the losses.
They also recommended at least 12 years for Wang, considering his status as a director of a well-known law firm and alleged key role in assisting the scheme.
Taiwan is stepping up plans to create self-sufficient supply chains for combat drones and increase foreign orders from the US to counter China’s numerical superiority, a defense official said on Saturday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, the official said the nation’s armed forces are in agreement with US Admiral Samuel Paparo’s assessment that Taiwan’s military must be prepared to turn the nation’s waters into a “hellscape” for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Paparo, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, reiterated the concept during a Congressional hearing in Washington on Wednesday. He first coined the term in a security conference last
A magnitude 4.3 earthquake struck eastern Taiwan's Hualien County at 8:31am today, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA). The epicenter of the temblor was located in Hualien County, about 70.3 kilometers south southwest of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 23.2km, according to the administration. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake's intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County, where it measured 3 on Taiwan's 7-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 2 in Hualien and Nantou counties, the CWA said.
The Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC) yesterday announced a fundraising campaign to support survivors of the magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck Myanmar on March 28, with two prayer events scheduled in Taipei and Taichung later this week. “While initial rescue operations have concluded [in Myanmar], many survivors are now facing increasingly difficult living conditions,” OCAC Minister Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) told a news conference in Taipei. The fundraising campaign, which runs through May 31, is focused on supporting the reconstruction of damaged overseas compatriot schools, assisting students from Myanmar in Taiwan, and providing essential items, such as drinking water, food and medical supplies,
New Party Deputy Secretary-General You Chih-pin (游智彬) this morning went to the National Immigration Agency (NIA) to “turn himself in” after being notified that he had failed to provide proof of having renounced his Chinese household registration. He was one of more than 10,000 naturalized Taiwanese citizens from China who were informed by the NIA that their Taiwanese citizenship might be revoked if they fail to provide the proof in three months, people familiar with the matter said. You said he has proof that he had renounced his Chinese household registration and demanded the NIA provide proof that he still had Chinese
RSS