Seven suspects have been indicted for allegedly organizing a fraud scheme with 179 victims that earned illegal income of NT$114.77 million (US$3.58 million), the Taoyuan District Prosecutors' Office said today.
A lawyer, surnamed Yu (游), was found to have recruited a couple, surnamed Kuo (郭) and Huang (黃), working at the Bank of Taiwan, and four others to form a scam gang using shell companies and cryptocurrency for money laundering, prosecutors said.
Photo: Wang Jie, Taipei Times
The prosecutors recommended that Yu receive a 13-year prison term, Kuo nine years, six years for Huang and two to seven years for the others for contravening the Organized Crime Prevention Act (組織犯罪防制條例), Money Laundering Control Act (洗錢防制法) and offenses of aggravated fraud.
After being recruited, Kuo and Huang looked for potential victims among bank customers trying to obtain loans, prosecutors said.
They then persuaded these people to borrow money from the bank and join their fake investment plan, they added.
After receiving the money, the gang allegedly transferred it to dummy accounts to create fake cash flows and changed the money into foreign currency to buy cryptocurrency overseas, illicitly earning more than NT$100 million from May last year to June, they said.
They were brought in and questioned in June.
After the Taoyuan District Court notified Yu that the High Court had rejected his appeal against his detention order, he allegedly bought a one-way ticket to Seoul.
He was arrested at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport and ordered to be detained in August.
Prosecutors confiscated NT$8.27 million and US$30,000 in cash, and cryptocurrency worth US$270,000.
The couple’s houses in Taipei and Kaohsiung were also searched.
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