The Criminal Investigation Bureau warned Wednesday that fraud rings are sending SMS and email messages about a forthcoming universal cash payout, steering victims to counterfeit websites that mimic Ministry of Finance pages and harvest banking credentials.
Police said legitimate payout registration will never ask for credit card numbers through embedded links. Real government domains end in .gov.tw with a dot before “gov,” not strings such as “gov-tw-pay.com” that investigators seized last week.
Scam patterns police see
One script claims a deposit is ready if the user “confirms identity” on a fake treasury portal. Another impersonates prosecutors, alleging identity theft of payout funds and instructing victims to wire money to “safe accounts.” Both spike whenever television news debates special-budget cash measures, even before disbursement dates are fixed.
August phishing losses hit NT$54.51 million despite an overall drop in broader fraud totals, according to 165 dashboard data cited by the bureau. Analysts said e-commerce refund lures and fake parking-payment texts still dominate, but payout-themed pages are the fastest-growing segment into October.
How to verify
Officials listed five lawful payout channels—direct deposit, registration deposit, ATM withdrawal, post office pickup and rostered distribution—and stressed that civil servants will not cold-call citizens for OTPs. If a message references Momo, Shopee or a bank reward, close the tab and open the retailer’s app manually.
Call 165 from the number on your bank card, not from the text thread. The bureau’s dashboard updates weekly with subject lines and domains to block on corporate firewalls.
Platform cooperation
LINE account hijacks tied to fake voting pleas fell sharply after the company rolled out primary-device checks, but police said compromised chat accounts now pitch payout “priority queues.” Telecom operators agreed to flag bulk SMS containing both “cash” and shortened URLs during the legislative session.
Business groups asked the Ministry of Digital Affairs to accelerate a national SMS sender registry so spoofed government names are harder to display. Until then, CIB detectives said, the safest filter is skepticism: payouts announced in law are not claimed through a link on a phone lock screen.
Employer advisories
Human-resources departments at major manufacturers circulated CIB slide decks to overseas Taiwanese staff, reminding them that payout rumors on LINE groups are not official even when forwarded by relatives in Taiwan.