Police bust 10-year-old fake NT$50 coin factory in TaiwanCentral News Agency, 2008-10-31 01:13 AM A makeshift factory that specialized in counterfeiting NT$50 (US$1.53) coins for the past 10 years has been discovered and manufacturing stopped in the southern county of Kaohsiung, with its owner arrested, police announced Thursday.
The 61-year-old owner, identified only by his family name Lin, told police he had been producing the fake NT$50 coins for a decade, injecting more that 500,000 fake coins, with a total face value of over NT$20 million, into the local market.
Acting on a tip-off, a law enforcement team of officers from the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) and police bureaus in Kaohsiung City, Kaohsiung County and neighboring Tainan County, raided the factory in Kaohsiung County's Luchu township Wednesday and seized its owner and a large number of finished and unfinished fake NT$50 coins, as well as counterfeiting machines and other equipment.
According to a CIB spokesman, Lin sold the fake coins to downstream accomplices who then laundered the money through retail market channels, night markets, convenience stores and automatic vending machines.
As the amounts were not large and no coin verification machines are available on the local market, the operation was not detected until recently, the police said.
Source:
Taiwan News
