Prostitution ring busted in north Taiwan
Central News Agency
2014-06-10 09:14 PM
Taipei, June 10 (CNA) Immigration officials on Tuesday managed to bust a prostitution ring in northern Taiwan that had been recruiting Chinese women to work in Taiwan using fake marriage credentials.
Immigration officers in Hsinchu County conducted simultaneous raids as police in China's coastal Fujian Province to catch the ringleaders on suspicion of forgery, violation of public decency, and the statute governing the peoples on both side of the Taiwan Strait.
Officials said that June 2013 interviews with Chinese women who immigrated through marriage revealed that 13 of them had shown nearly identical "conversations" with their respective husbands over instant message, raising suspicions among the authorities.
After a lengthy investigation, authorities managed to find the ringleaders, identifying them as a man surnamed Hsu in Taiwan and another surnamed Lin in Fujian.
The ring was found to be recruiting Chinese women willing to travel to Taiwan for the sex trade, then matching them with willing Taiwanese men for a marriage of convenience to facilitate their entry into Taiwan.
Other Chinese women entered Taiwan under the pretenses of doing business, seeking medical care, or tourism, according to officials.
The immigration agency found that one of the women had gone so far as to spend NT$100,000 (US$3,333) for plastic surgery before coming to Taiwan to ensure she would become popular in the ring.
(By Liao Jen-kai and Lilian Wu)
