Six men arrested in scam targeting South Korean national

Taipei, Aug. 20 (CNA) Taipei police have arrested six individuals suspected of defrauding a South Korean national through a scheme involving cryptocurrency and a luxury watch, the Daan Precinct of the Taipei City Police Department said in a statement Tuesday.

Police launched an investigation after a South Korean businessman in Taiwan reported in April being scammed while seeking to purchase cryptocurrency and a luxury watch through an online platform.

The South Korean met three men -- a 33-year-old surnamed Lu (盧), a 26-year-old surnamed Hou (侯) and a 20-year-old surnamed Yang (楊) -- at a coffee shop in Taipei before moving to their car to complete the transaction, only to discover they had nothing to sell.

According to police, the South Korean rushed out of the car after realizing it was a scam without taking his backpack, which contained NT$500,000 (US$16,546) in cash for the planned purchases.

The police did not provide any further details on exactly what happened when the fraud victim was in the car or why he left the backpack behind.

After reviewing CCTV footage, the police found that the suspects briefly stopped in Taipei's Daan District to alter the license plate on the day they met the victim, before abandoning the vehicle in New Taipei's Sanxia District in an attempt to evade pursuit.

Those three suspects were arrested in April.

Further investigation identified three more men -- a 37-year-old surnamed Yu (俞), a 31-year-old surnamed Chang (張) and a 30-year-old surnamed Wen (溫) from Hualien -- who were allegedly involved in orchestrating the scheme, providing fake IDs and supplying vehicles.

The police said they arrested those three individuals and seized more than NT$90,000 in cash, four mobile phones, bank cards and passbooks as evidence during multiple raids in Hualien and New Taipei's Pinglin District in late July, but the case was not made public until Tuesday.

All six suspects have been referred to the Taipei District Prosecutors' Office on charges including fraud, violation of the Organized Crime Prevention Act, and money laundering, the police said.