A courier for a phone-scam ring in Taiwan was sentenced to prison for laundering a victim's money into game credits — bad news for low-level scam runners, who take almost all the risk for almost none of the money.

• A man used a scam ring's QR code linked to a victim's bank account to buy game credits at convenience stores in Hualien.
• He drained NT$80,000 from a Changhua victim's account in about an hour across three stores, then sent the credit codes back to the ring's chat group.
• His cut was NT$100 for every NT$100,000 moved — NT$80 in total for the whole run.
• The victim noticed the empty account and called police, who traced the store transactions and store cameras and arrested him quickly.
• The court gave him one year and four months in prison plus a NT$15,000 fine, noting he already had a fraud conviction from 2024.

Outlook: Taiwanese courts are handing down heavy sentences to scam couriers, but the ring members who keep the money remain out of reach.