Prosecutors indict 7 in case involving high-speed rail tickets

Taipei, March 6 (CNA) Taipei prosecutors on Thursday indicted seven people for allegedly stealing credit card details to buy high-speed rail tickets for resale.

The suspects, including five men and two women, were identified by their last names Huang (黃), Shih (施), Hsieh (謝), Chen (陳) and Lin (林), according to a press release issued by the Shilin District Prosecutors Office.

The credit card information was stolen through phishing, with the suspects texting random numbers to trick people into believing that there were outstanding parking tickets or fines that needed to be paid through a provided website link, the office said.

With the details obtained, the suspects used them to buy large quantities of high-speed rail tickets from Taipei to Zuoying (Kaohsiung), which are valued at NT$1,490 (US$45.37) per trip.

In order to attract buyers, the one-way train tickets were then advertised and sold on various LINE chat groups for NT$1,192 each, prosecutors said.

Their illegal activities spanned from June 2023 to January 2024, with the number of victims who had their credit card information stolen totaling 29, they said.

This criminal ring allegedly profited over NT$13 million, which have been converted into cryptocurrency and transferred to an overseas cold wallet in an attempt to conceal the flow of funds and evade investigation, prosecutors said.

The suspects were subsequently arrested during two separate raids.

According to the office, they were indicted for fraud under the Criminal Code, as well as contraventions of the Organized Crime Prevention Act, the Railway Act, and the Money Laundering Control Act.