On December 29th , 2020, the prosecutor at Hualien District Prosecutors Office, Yi-Jen Wang, directed the police to break up a scam gang. The police searched a guesthouse in Hualien City and arrested 20 people suspected of operating a telephone deception syndicate. With 53 cell phones, some laptops and instruction manual seized, the prosecutor detained all the arrestees.

With the help of digital forensics, Prosecutor Wang decrypted all the encrypted messages and information stored in the defendants’ cell phones and cloud drives, and found the gang, from August to December 2020, rented guesthouses in Pingtung and Hualien County to set up its operational bases and call centers. Members of the syndicate defrauded victims in China by making calls to pretend to be law enforcement, and ask the victims to pay fines right away or an arrest warrant will be issued. When victims wired the money as instructed, the fraudsters in turn made wire transfers and withdraw all the money.

Prosecutor charged Lin, the mastermind, and other 19 accomplices with fraud and violation of Organized Crime Prevention Act. Since the defendants operated the scheme for a long period and made huge illegal gains, the prosecutor requested the defendants to be not only condemned to severe punishment, but also imposed a fine from New Taiwan Dollar 300 thousand to 1 million respectively. If convicted , the defendants also will face a compulsory labor service for one year.

The prosecutors, on the one hand, will keep working on combating Scam gangs, and on the other, recommend the public to stay alert and call 165, Anti-fraud hotline, for more information when needed.