A Ray of Hope Amidst the Absurd Mental Standards in Aiding-Fraud Cases: The Taoyuan District Court 100th-Year Jian-Shang-Zai-Zi No. 1 Judgment

I. Introduction

On May 8, 2013, the Taiwan Taoyuan District Court rendered a precious not-guilty judgment under 100-Year Jian-Shang-Zai-Zi No. 1. It is precious not merely because it is one of the exceptionally rare not-guilty verdicts in dummy-account aiding-fraud cases, but because the verdict was achieved only after the defendant and the defendant's mother demonstrated relentless perseverance, filing for retrial again and again after being convicted in two instances of aiding fraud, ultimately overturning the case to secure an acquittal. It is hard to know if there is any precedent for securing an acquittal through a retrial in cases of this nature.

The defendant in this case had just been discharged from military service and was looking for work in society when they were defrauded into "delivering" their bank passbook, ATM card, and PIN code, which were then used by a fraud syndicate as a dummy account. This went through the Taiwan Taoyuan District Court 96-Year Li-Jian-Zi No. 2689 judgment and 97-Year Jian-Shang-Zi No. 162 guilty judgment convictions. Subsequently, the motion for retrial was dismissed by the 99-Year Sheng-Jian-Zai-Zi No. 14 ruling. Finally, the initiation of a retrial was approved under the 100-Year Sheng-Jian-Zai-Zi No. 4 criminal ruling, ultimately leading to a not-guilty judgment. It is understood that although the prosecutors still appealed this case, the defendant and the defendant's mother persevered through two instances of fact-finding trials and continued to fight after the conviction became final until they finally obtained an acquittal, a process truly worthy of note. This article takes this opportunity to briefly express humble opinions on the prevalent absurd mental standards in the category of dummy-account aiding-fraud cases.

II. The T-Virus-Like Spread of Absurd Mental Standards Regarding the Two Elements of Subjective Aiding Intent and Objective Aiding Conduct

Currently, the reasoning for guilty verdicts in dummy-account aiding-fraud cases is nothing more than: "According to personal socio-economic life, passbooks, ATM cards, and PIN codes of financial institution accounts are important materials. If lost or stolen, a reasonable person would immediately report the loss and stop payment to the issuing financial institution and report it to the police to prevent deposits from being stolen or related materials from being used by lawbreakers for criminal purposes. Furthermore, keeping an ATM card's PIN code together with the ATM card means that if the card is lost or stolen, the deposited funds can also be stolen or used unlawfully; a person with ordinary knowledge and experience would not memorize a PIN code in this manner. Moreover, fraud syndicates are rampant today, and newspapers, magazines, television, and other media constantly call on the public to pay attention to the custody of their own account data and not arbitrarily provide them to others for use to avoid violating the law. The defendant is an adult of normal intelligence and cannot plead ignorance of the above." Aside from the reasoning regarding the defendant's confessed portion, guilty verdicts for those denying the crime almost universally adopt a "copy-paste" legal methodology, subsequently slightly adjusting and embellishing it according to the circumstances of the individual case. However, this type of argumentation—which violates the presumption of innocence, contradicts the rules of experience, and further violates the rules of evidence—spreads infinitely like the T-Virus within the judicial system; because there is no opportunity to appeal to the third instance, there is no antidote whatsoever, and further because penalties are usually relatively light, very few defendants are willing to continue suffering in litigation proceedings and instead accept plea bargains for probation. This factor results in litigation of this type being entirely unsuited to provoking social public opinion, thereby creating the currently unchangeable rut. The following section will point out the more serious problems of violating legal principles in cases of this type.

(1. Even a Criminal Fact (Aiding Conduct) with Everything "Unknown" Can Still Be Indicted)

During the investigative stage of cases of this type, because it is sometimes extremely difficult to apprehend the masterminds of a fraud syndicate, and at most only some youths who are utilized as runners and understand nothing of the details are caught, the process of how the dummy accounts were acquired is completely untraceable. Therefore, regarding the constituent elements such as the account-holder defendant's subjective intent to aid and objective aiding conduct—in situations where the defendant denies the crime—the prosecutors have at most in their hands only the data of the victims remitting funds into the dummy accounts and the transcripts of the defendant denying the crime during police and prosecutorial interrogation. There is simply no evidence upon which aiding conduct can be established.

In cases where the defendant's defense focuses on loss or theft, because the defendant is often unable to account for when and where the loss occurred, the prosecuted criminal facts portion regarding the objective aiding conduct in the indictment can only state that "the defendant, at an unknown time and at an unknown place, delivered the account passbook, ATM card, and PIN code opened in the defendant's name to members of a fraud syndicate of unknown names and ages; the fraud syndicate then on a certain month, day, and year defrauded a victim into remitting funds into the defendant's account"; or at most, based on account transaction details, take the last time of use admitted by the defendant as the starting point, and the time the victim was defrauded into remitting funds as the ending point, using this time interval as the time the defendant delivered the passbook data, even though there is actually no evidence to even question whether the delivery conduct genuinely existed.

If the defendant's defense focuses on being defrauded into delivering passbook data and other materials, the indictment mostly directly adopts the delivery time and place described by the defendant themselves as the criminal facts, with no other evidence provided to establish the fact of aiding conduct apart from the defendant's own narrative. As for the intent to aid, since the defendant admitted to delivering them in the first place, their defense is deemed untruthful, and it is directly concluded that the intent to aid was present.

From the above, it can be seen that prosecutors usually only hold data such as the time and amount of the victim's remittance, while actually knowing nothing whatsoever about the criminal facts of the aiding conduct, let alone the subjective intent to aid. Yet, prosecutors frequently still indict based on these completely unknown criminal facts. Faced with the query of how an indictment can be brought when the criminal facts are unclear, they all put forward the practical legal opinion that criminal facts do not need to be investigated to be clear as a shield. This excuse overtly and excessively expands practical legal views, evading the requirement in the Code of Criminal Procedure for the prosecution to bear the substantial burden of proof, and making it impossible to shake off criticisms of indicting without evidence and violating the presumption of innocence.

(2. Completely Unsubstantiated and Absurd Rules of Experience)

Using the reasoning within the original first-instance judgment of this case as an example: "...according to the social experience of ordinary persons, if someone encounters another person who does not apply for a deposit account with a financial institution themselves, but instead collects financial accounts from others for use, this is a rather bizarre matter. Under the circumstances, the person providing the account could not possibly have had no suspicions as to whether such accounts were provided for lawful use. Moreover, in today's society, utilizing dummy accounts as instruments for the crime of fraud and theft is frequently heard of and widely reported by the media. The defendant should have been aware of this, and could foresee that the unidentified person of unknown name and age who received the account passbook and ATM card from them might utilize the financial institution account provided by them for the purpose of defrauding others into remitting funds, thereby achieving the objectives of concealing the flow of funds and avoiding the exposure of the identity of the person withdrawing the funds through the process of depositing and then withdrawing the obtained funds. The defendant, without thoroughly investigating the purpose for which the unidentified person obtained the financial institution account passbook and ATM card, rashly handed over the important and personally exclusive financial institution passbook and ATM card to said unidentified person for use, which obviously shows the original intention of condoning the unidentified person's use of the financial institution deposit account opened by them as an instrument for the crime of fraud and theft. Thus, it is abundantly clear that the defendant indeed possessed the conditional intent to aid others in fraud and theft." The keyword "widely reported by the media" also appears here. Frankly speaking, this is also a judgment reason infected by the copy-paste legal methodology virus.

In reality, this type of argumentation is clearly neither testimonial evidence nor documentary evidence; it does not belong to any kind of evidentiary method and cannot even be called evidence. In cases of this type, there are only three items of evidence: the victim's statement, the victim's remittance record, and the defendant's confession for the not-guilty defense. When the victim's statement and the victim's remittance record are clearly unrelated to the intent and conduct of aiding fraud, there are fundamentally no other evidentiary methods available to establish the defendant's intent to aid and aiding conduct. Based on the requirements of the presumption of innocence and the principle of resolving doubts in favor of the accused, a non-prosecution disposition should have been rendered during the investigative stage, and a not-guilty judgment should have been rendered after indictment, but current practice is not so.

Furthermore, this kind of rhetoric—which constantly uses "widely reported by the media" to establish general social consensus and rules of experience, thereby excluding all other reasonable doubts—is nothing short of a heresy filled with elitist ideology, grossly exaggerating the frequency and effect of media advocacy, and is completely unable to withstand challenge. One might ask: what are the frequency and count of this so-called "wide reporting"? What is the penetration rate among the public who accept this "wide reporting"? How many such messages are broadcast every day by major news stations and variety channels? What about people who do not have fixed habits of media-contacting lifestyles? Does everyone in society go home and stare at the television? And will they necessarily see the so-called media reports? This kind of argumentation fundamentally lacks basis and is obviously a generalization based on bias. The only medium broadcasting round-the-clock is probably just the promotional short film in the public area of the Chungli Summary Court, which is why only the judges inside the courthouse themselves feel that it was "widely reported by the media."

Additionally, regarding the crime pattern, no distinction was made regarding the manner in which the defendant provided the passbook and other items for "use" by others. For example, the defendant in this case provided them when applying for an external collection job as a guarantee or for offsetting funds to ensure future field personnel would not misappropriate funds. In terms of the manner of use, part of it still belonged to the defendant using it themselves, which is obviously distinct from completely selling passbook data for use by others, yet the original first-instance judgment failed to examine this in detail. Furthermore, regarding whether the act of "delivery" even existed—meaning defenses such as being defrauded into delivery versus loss or theft—no distinction was made whatsoever; contradictions in the defendant's transcript were usually picked apart, and the defendant's statements were treated as untrue evidence of delivery, choosing selective amnesia regarding the prosecution's complete failure to bear the burden of proof concerning the delivery act.

Meanwhile, the not-guilty judgment in this case also mentioned the aforementioned viewpoint: "Moreover, the level of vigilance regarding social matters often varies from person to person, and is correlated with their social experience, cognitive ability, and degree of attention to social current events, and has no inevitable relationship with their educational attainment. This can be understood by observing that despite vigorous government advocacy and extensive media reporting, highly educated persons, mentally mature retirees, and others still fall victim to the scam methods of fraud syndicates." Although this is not the first time it has appeared in a not-guilty judgment, it is indeed a sound argument.

(3. Double Standards for Being Defrauded of Money Versus Being Defrauded of Passbook Data)

Following the above, another blind spot of this argumentation lies in its ostrich-like disregard of the fact that even after being "widely reported by the media," many members of the public still fall for scams and hand over money. Among them are many highly educated intellectuals, and even prominent social figures such as YEN TIER-HWA (Yin Yan-liang) recently. If the proposition of "widely reported by the media" held true, absolutely no one would be defrauded, fraud syndicates could not scam money, and cases of this type would have long since vanished from society. But in reality, cases of people being defrauded still emerge endlessly, and crime methods are constantly renewed. While advocacy urging people not to easily operate ATMs to remit funds upon telephone instructions is already thus, advocacy urging people not to easily hand over financial account data is clearly even scarcer and less effective, proving once again that the court's set of experience rules regarding "widely reported by the media" has no basis in argument whatsoever. On the one hand, the court affirms the fact of being defrauded of money, but on the other hand, it uses extremely crude methods to deny the reasonable doubt of being defrauded into delivering passbooks, completely failing to distinguish the defendant's mentality, age, educational attainment, living conditions, circumstances at the time of delivery, and other possibilities, blindly generalizing, which naturally makes it difficult to convince the public.

III. The Dilemma of Dummy-Account Aiding-Fraud Case Types

(1. Defendants Generally Possess Lower Organization and Narrative Capabilities)

Defendants in cases of this type usually lack money and connections and are urgently seeking employment, or have lower academic and cognitive abilities, performing poorly in the ability to narrate and organize facts, and often jumping across time sequences or presenting disconnected factual narratives. When listening to questions and answering, they often have insufficient understanding and answer hastily, coupled with failing to carefully scrutinize wording when transcripts are made, and failing to check when the clerk records inaccuracies. However, judges and prosecutors usually only repeat questions according to the transcript to find contradictions in statements. Without the assistance of a lawyer, this will cause the transcript to deviate from the facts the disadvantaged party with low academic ability wants to narrate. The result is that their statements are deemed inconsistent and obviously untrue, which is then followed by a presumption of guilt.

(2. Inability to Appeal to the Third Instance to Dispute Evidentiary Rules)

Problems of this nature concerning evidentiary rules and the presumption of innocence should properly be resolved at the Supreme Court as a court of law. However, because the applicable legal provisions for cases of this type fall under Article 339 of the Criminal Code for fraud, which is a petty offense unappealable to the third instance, they naturally cannot gain the opportunity to enter a legal review to dispute evidentiary rules. Under the reality that first- and second-instance courts indiscriminately penalize the innocent, there is a lack of a battlefield for dispute, leaving behind only an impression of arrogant power for the defendant.

Moreover, prosecutors in cases of this type usually initiate prosecution by applying for summary judgment procedures, and the first-instance court mostly directly sentences without investigation. After appeal, the second-instance trial is also conducted in the district court, without even reaching the High Court. Although it cannot be said that High Court judges are necessarily more favorable to defendants regarding sentencing and legal interpretation in cases of this type, there is still the personal human factor of judges within the same court overturning their peers' judgments, making it extremely difficult to obtain an acquittal. This not-guilty judgment, being able to uphold justice and render an acquittal after being processed by two instances of the same court and one dismissed retrial ruling, is all the more rare.

(3. The Difficulty of Being Required to Self-Prove Innocence Under the Condition of the Presumption of Guilt)

Under current practical realities, regardless of whether the defendant confesses or whether there is evidence proving the defendant delivered passbook data, as long as a victim remitted funds and the money was withdrawn, they will basically be deemed an accomplice to the fraud syndicate based on the aforementioned reasoning. This forces the defendant to rack their brains to prove they are not lying. As mentioned previously, defendants generally possess lower organization and narrative capabilities, and cannot possibly understand how to preserve evidence; furthermore, because they must prove the negative fact that they committed no criminal act or even lacked subjective intent, in terms of evidentiary methods, defendants often become headless chickens making carpet-bombing requests to investigate peripheral circumstantial evidence, which is extremely prone to being rejected by the court, further increasing the difficulty of proof. Moreover, circumstantial evidence tends to be scattered and lost as time passes. Under ordinary circumstances, defendants of this type lack financial resources or, considering themselves victims, feel it unnecessary to retain a lawyer as defense counsel during the investigative stage; after being indicted, even if they hire a lawyer, job-seeking or call logs of loss-reporting telephone calls may have long exceeded the retention period and cannot be collected; job advertisements cannot be obtained because they do not know how to preserve them, forget the time or newspaper type, or simply obtained the job information on BBS or chat room networks. In the case of loss, because it is impossible to determine when and where the loss occurred, there is simply no way to determine which time point's evidence to look for, or other than loss-reporting records, no other evidence is available. Lacking these evidences to prove their statements are true, coupled with inadvertently inconsistent transcripts, both the prosecution and trial sides treat the defendant's statements as untrue, and indict and sentence in the absence of evidence proving criminal conduct.

(4. Defendants Easily Accept Plea Bargains of Confession and Compensation in Exchange for Probation)

Prosecutors in cases of this type usually prosecute by applying for summary judgment procedures. Burdened by case-closure pressure, and with virtually no evidence to investigate regarding the aiding fraud, the first-instance court mostly directly sentences without investigation. By the time the defendant sees a judge, it is already the second-instance stage at the district court. However, the situation defendants usually encounter is that because the penalty for cases of this type is very light even if convicted, judges will urge them to confess, taking partial compensation of the victim's amount as a condition for probation. On one hand facing heavy case-closure pressure, and on the other hand because it is a petty offense with a small victimized amount, they half-cajole and half-deceive. Defendants often, due to difficulty maintaining livelihood or lacking the mental energy to continue coping with litigation procedures, and under the reality that the probability of acquittal is too low, accept this condition exchange of spending money to avert disaster, making it even more impossible for cases of this type to obtain relief. Only a few defendants, like the one in this not-guilty judgment, are willing to continue fighting for their innocence in this manner.

Even some judges, although harboring the mindset that the indictment in such cases violates the presumption of innocence, fear that even if they acquit, the High Court judges will deal an even heavier hand upon prosecution appeal, and thus prefer to handle the case at the first instance by settling through reconciliation in exchange for probation. All of these factors cause a surge of defendants who plead guilty for the sake of judicial economy, invisibly perpetuating this unfair phenomenon. Furthermore, such guilty-plea reconciliations exchanged for probation cannot even be filtered out when searching judgments, because the text of the judgment will only contain descriptions of the defendant pleading guilty and reaching a reconciliation with the victim.

IV. Conclusion

Defendants of dummy-account aiding fraud, broadly distinguished by whether delivery conduct occurred or not, fall into two categories: loss or theft of the passbook with no delivery, and delivery conduct due to being defrauded during job hunting. In ordinary popular sentiment, people naturally feel that having their passbook lost, stolen, or defrauded makes them victims, sharing the same plight as the victims defrauded of money. When reported as a warning account, the cash in all accounts under their name is frozen simultaneously, and an ordinary commoner may even face difficulties in daily life as a result. Yet, despite suffering the same deception, the court actually imposes criminal penalties on those defrauded of passbooks, makes them carry a criminal record, and even subjects them to incidental civil lawsuits for damages filed by the remitting victims. Throughout investigation and trial procedures, to elicit inconsistent defenses, defendants of dummy-account aiding fraud are repeatedly questioned with an attitude presuming guilt. The defendant, originally anticipating obtaining justice and redemption through investigation and trial, is instead pushed into the abyss of hell. Ordinary citizen concepts such as the presumption of innocence and conviction based on evidence are completely destroyed. This abnormal practical reality of using dummy-account cases to pad performance figures for cracking down on fraud syndicates constantly causes conflicts in the legal sentiments of the people, and the ultimate victim will inevitably be the judicial authority residing in the hearts of commoners!

This not-guilty judgment correctly implements the principles of the presumption of innocence and resolving doubts in favor of the accused. The defendant in the original trial actually presented an Apple Daily job advertisement, and mobile phone call logs showed continuous contact with that job-hunting telephone number for over two weeks, which should have been sufficient to prove that a job application indeed occurred. Moreover, there was also testimony that upon suspicion, the defendant sought help from their mother to call the 165 anti-fraud hotline and reported the loss to postal customer service, alongside call logs of calling 119 to the police, which were sufficient to prove the defendant took actions to report the loss and call the police. All of these were sufficient to prove the defendant genuinely experienced being defrauded during a job search. Yet the presentation of these evidences, through two instances of fact-finding trials, still could not prevent the court—in the absence of any evidence proving intent to aid—from directly concluding the presence of intent to aid based on absurd rules of experience. This mindset shared by the courts and prosecution—that falsely convicting light offenses matters little, committing a minor evil is permissible—overlooks the destructive power of a single spark that can start a prairie fire. Defendants of aiding fraud are mostly concentrated among ordinary commoners; when people are wrongfully implicated and, in investigation and trial procedures they originally expected to be fair and based on evidence, instead face a presumption of guilt, and are even unable to prove their own innocence despite presenting newspaper ads and call logs, their trust in the court's trial procedures must long since have vanished completely. With the volume of dummy-account cases being so massive, how can the consequence of the foundations of judicial authority being thoroughly eroded be prevented? And how can judges and prosecutors expect to gain the support of commoners when facing unreasonable accusations of being "dinosaur judges" or "pacifier judges" to set things right in public opinion? Little do they know that long before, amidst simple actions of ctrl+c and ctrl+v, the glory of the judicial robe had already been discarded.