A Taipei City crime-squad tech chief has been caught secretly pulling residents' personal data and handing it to a former mentor turned real estate agent, a bad hit to public trust in the police.

• Chen Guan-liang, head of the Taipei police tech-investigation squad, is accused of pulling more than 100 people's private records since March and passing them to Wu Zheng-you, his old police mentor who left the force to sell real estate.
• Wu wanted the data to track down owners of hard-to-untangle properties tied to an urban renewal (redevelopment) project, and allegedly paid about 10,000 NT per record — over a million NT in total.
• To dodge the department's internal data-access audits, Chen hid his target names inside official case documents sent to prosecutors he knew, getting them to pull the records for him without realizing why.
• The scheme unraveled when a prosecutor noticed records that had nothing to do with any real case; Chen then turned himself in to his commander.

Outlook: Investigators are now digging into how Wu used the stolen data and whether a wider property-speculation ring or other accomplices were involved.