A "fake investment" fraud ring has shifted its focus to Taiwanese and Chinese people who have moved to the United States, Japan, and Canada, swindling more than NT$5 billion in a single year — a serious warning sign for overseas Chinese communities.

• The ring specifically preys on émigrés who live abroad and frequently go online to keep track of relatives and friends in Taiwan; once a target is locked in, it sends money mules posing as investors to their homes to collect cash.
• An octogenarian woman surnamed Hsu, who had lived in California for 20 years, was defrauded of nearly US$3 million; after investigating, police found that victims were spread across the United States, Japan, and Canada.
• Most victims were swindled out of tens of millions of NT dollars, with the illicit proceeds transferred out via cryptocurrency, the bulk flowing to China, followed by Taiwan and Cambodia.
• The modus operandi resembled "Chinese and Taiwanese criminals joining forces": if the victim was Taiwanese, a Taiwanese mule was dispatched; if the victim was Chinese, a Chinese mule was sent.

A task force directed by the Taipei District Prosecutors Office has been investigating since June, and by August had arrested more than 20 money mules one after another.

Outlook: Police are still tracing the ring behind the scenes, and the risk of fake investment fraud faced by overseas émigrés will not decline in the short term.