Taiwan is seeking to establish special legal controls to ban non-exchange individual currency dealers

Current Situation and Financial Loss Statistics of Fake Investment Scams

In recent years, Taiwan has faced a double escalation in the number of fake investment fraud cases and the scale of financial losses, becoming a major concern in society. According to statistics from the Criminal Investigation Bureau, there were 11,405 cases of fake investment fraud last year, causing financial losses of up to 5.34 billion New Taiwan Dollars, setting a new record high. This not only reveals the diversity and innovation of fraud methods but also highlights the inadequacy of current prevention measures.

Cryptocurrency and Challenges in Crime Regulation

Cryptocurrency plays a significant role in this wave of fraud. In many investment fraud cases, the confiscated proceeds often exist in the form of cryptocurrency. However, existing laws have limited ability to regulate cryptocurrency crimes, making such criminal activities difficult to effectively curb. This not only increases the difficulty of tracking and seizing criminal proceeds but also brings greater financial losses to the victims.

Government Response Measures and Challenges

To block strawman accounts from becoming a criminal conduit, the Taiwanese government is set to implement the newly revised Anti-Money Laundering Act, especially regulating the behavior of providing accounts to others without cause. However, even so, individual coin merchants becoming the "strawman" for fraud groups remains an intractable problem. The law can only impose administrative penalties on those who conduct cryptocurrency transactions without permission, which is clearly insufficient to deter criminal behavior.

Legislative and Strategic Recommendations

Faced with this challenge, the police suggest enacting special laws to regulate cryptocurrency transactions, proposing the adoption of a "licensing system" to manage individual coin merchants. Moreover, to plug legal loopholes, the Ministry of Justice has proposed amendments that aim to impose criminal penalties on unlicensed operators, with the draft law already submitted to the Executive Yuan for review. These measures reflect the government's emphasis on cryptocurrency crimes and demonstrate the government's determination to protect the financial safety of the public.