The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a guilty verdict for two people over the imprisonment and subsequent deaths of three people targeted in a fraud scheme.
The two had their life sentences upheld.
Eleven named accomplices received jail sentences ranging from five years to 25 years and six months.
Photo: Yang Kuo-wen, Taipei Times
The verdict is not final.
Fu Yu-lin (傅榆藺) and Chen Hua-wei (陳樺韋) were accused of being the masterminds behind a scam group that lured people with fake job offers before abducting and torturing them to gain control of their bank accounts.
The accounts were used in schemes that defrauded 267 people of almost NT$400 million (US$12.18 million), court records from an earlier trial said.
A man surnamed Huang (黃), aged 38, a woman also surnamed Huang, aged 45, and a man surnamed Lin (林), aged 57, died from abuse in captivity, the verdict said.
Their bodies were abandoned in mountainous areas in Taoyuan and Nantou County, Chinese-language media reported.
In 2022, a police investigation into a missing persons report exposed the group’s activities and resulted in its members being detained.
The Shilin District Court last year convicted 29 people in connection with the case, sentencing three people accused of masterminding the plot to life in prison.
The defendants appealed the verdict at the Taiwan High Court, which — citing a need to maintain judicial efficiency — separated them into two groups for retrial due to the large amount of evidence and number of people involved.
Yesterday’s proceedings involving 13 defendants largely upheld the lower court’s verdict, with the judges saying the greed of the accused had caused three deaths and inflicted grievous harm to others.
Tu Cheng-che (杜承哲), a third leader of the crime group, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in a separate trial of 16 other defendants earlier last month.
Three other accomplices in Tu’s trial were also sentenced to life in prison.
In separate news, the Ciaotao District Prosecutors’ Office said that it has indicted two university professors identified by their surnames, Wang (王) and Tang (唐), for corruption in an alleged cash for grades scheme.
The professors who taught at an unnamed Kaohsiung-based national university of science and technology are believed to have accepted bribes ranging from NT$100,000 to NT$400,000 from six students in exchange for better grades and help with their theses, the office said in a news release.
The Ciaotao District Court rejected a request by the prosecutors’ office to remand the professors and a student surnamed Cheng (鄭), saying that they posed little flight risk due to their limited financial means and because the professors had confessed.
Wang, Tang and Cheng were released on bail of NT$200,000, NT$100,000 and NT$50,000 respectively, while five other students were released on bail of NT$100,000 each.
DEEPER REVIEW: After receiving 19 hospital reports of suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health applied for an epidemiological investigation A buffet restaurant in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) is to be fined NT$3 million (US$91,233) after it remained opened despite an order to suspend operations following reports that 32 people had been treated for suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. The health department said it on Tuesday received reports from hospitals of people who had suspected food poisoning symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea, after they ate at an INPARADISE (饗饗) branch in Breeze Xinyi on Sunday and Monday. As more than six people who ate at the restaurant sought medical treatment, the department ordered the
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Taiwan’s population last year shrank further and births continued to decline to a yearly low, the Ministry of the Interior announced today. The ministry published the 2024 population demographics statistics, highlighting record lows in births and bringing attention to Taiwan’s aging population. The nation’s population last year stood at 23,400,220, a decrease of 20,222 individuals compared to 2023. Last year, there were 134,856 births, representing a crude birth rate of 5.76 per 1,000 people, a slight decline from 2023’s 135,571 births and 5.81 crude birth rate. This decrease of 715 births resulted in a new record low per the ministry’s data. Since 2016, which saw
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
RSS