Police bust 10-year-old fake NT$50 coin factory in Taiwan
Arizona Coin Collector
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FROM:
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Taiwan News
Police bust 10-year-old fake NT$50 coin factory in Taiwan
Central 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.
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