Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/10/18
By: Liu Chien-pang and Matthew Mazzetta

Taipei, Oct. 18 (CNA) Police have busted a telecom fraud ring that tricked migrant workers into handing over their personal information and used it to register for phone numbers, which they then sold to other telecom fraud operations to scam victims of money, the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) said at a press conference on Friday.

A total of 12 suspects, including eight Vietnamese migrants and spouses, were arrested in raids that took place in several cities in Taiwan on Wednesday and Thursday, the CIB said.

The CIB's Telecom Investigation Corps Deputy Commander Lin Ming-chun (林明俊) said the suspects sent Vietnamese sales agents to locations frequented by migrant workers on weekends, where they obtained the victims' personal information by offering to help them register for a mobile phone number free of charge.

Because many migrant workers are unfamiliar with the application process and do not speak the local language, they often rely on middlemen to help them apply for phone and internet service, Lin said. In this case, however, the suspects allegedly used the migrants' personal information to apply for phone numbers for the purpose of selling them to telecom fraud organizations.
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