2025-02-17 00:37 United Daily News / Reporter LI,I-HSIN, CHEN,CHIN-SUNG / Reporting from Taipei
At the end of last year, a mother and daughter in Taipei committed suicide after being defrauded of NT$12 million by fake investments. Their families lamented that the fraud in Taiwan was too serious. According to statistics, more than 120,000 fraud cases were received across the country last year, and Chinese people were defrauded of more than 50 billion yuan. Fraud syndicates seek wealth and murder, and the number of victims and financial losses have repeatedly reached new highs, which has become a new national security crisis.
Last year, the Supervisory Yuan passed the “Government Countermeasures and Review of Preventing Telecommunications Network Fraud” investigation and research report, stating that telecommunications network fraud cases have seriously damaged people’s lives and property and have become a national security crisis. It requires the Executive Yuan to pay attention and establish an inter-ministerial integration mechanism to actively review and improve.
A 55-year-old woman from Neihu District, Bei City, whose husband has been dead for many years, raised a son and daughter by working at a convenience store. Last year, she mistakenly believed in a fake investment advertisement on Facebook, and made interviews and remittances of 12 million between July and October. She found out that she had been deceived too late. On December 4 last year, she was accompanied by her 29-year-old daughter, who is an accountant, to the Gangqian Police Station of Neihu Police Station in Bei City to report the crime. Four days later, the mother and daughter were found to have committed suicide.
After the case was exposed, the society was shocked. The government’s inability to deal with the fraud group made the Chinese people angry. The woman’s daughter’s suicide note also revealed that the police had improperly accepted the call to the mother to make an appointment to make a transcript. She was questioned as causing secondary harm to the victim. The police immediately came to apologize and explain the handling process. The family lamented that fraud in Taiwan was too serious. They did not expect that their relatives would also encounter it. They also encountered problems with the police’s attitude in accepting the case. They hope to detect the fraud group as soon as possible and bring the criminals to justice.
According to statistics from the Criminal Bureau, there were 37,823 fraud cases with a financial loss of 8.94 billion yuan the year before last. Last year, the number surged to 122,805 cases with a financial loss of 50.25 billion yuan. Among them, 43,015 fake investments were the most serious, with a financial loss of 37.22 billion yuan.
The number of frauds has doubled, mainly because the Police Department launched the “Anti-Fraud Dashboard” in September last year, which requires the completion of criminal case record forms and “beautification of data is strictly prohibited.” From September to December last year, it received an average of more than 23,000 cases per month, which was more than six times the monthly average of more than 3,700 cases in the previous eight months. However, many in the police believe that with the number of unreported cases, the actual cases and financial losses may be even more shocking.
Wang Boqi, an associate professor of the Department of Crime Prevention at Ming Chuan University said that the “Anti-Fraud Dashboard” has lifted the fig leaf of fraud, and the government has announced a “national team to combat fraud.” However, after the slogan was raised, the relevant ministries and commissions’ anti-fraud efforts were still multi-faceted. He said that fraud hinders the country’s economic development and destroys families. The government should integrate across departments and agencies to crack down on fraud from the Internet, finance, telecommunications and other levels, and strengthen money laundering prevention to avoid the rapid transfer of stolen money. Otherwise, the gangsters will follow one after another, and “the police will never be able to catch them all.”
Anti-fraud police officers believe that most of the scam group’s computer rooms are located overseas, and money is laundered in virtual currencies such as Tether. In addition, fake investment advertisements continue to appear on the shelves. The police are exhausted and are still unable to find the leader of the fraud group behind it.