Dummy Accounts: Courts and Prosecutors, Listen to Civil Society

Last edited: 2026-08-30

Judicial Reform Foundation

In recent years, fraud cases involving dummy accounts have generated recurring controversy. Courts still apply broad and inconsistent standards when inferring conditional intent to aid fraud, and increasing numbers of people who provide accounts have also been convicted of money laundering, creating additional disputes.

The JRF therefore reviewed relevant judgments, organized four major categories of problematic cases, and reported this systemic judicial problem to the National Human Rights Commission in early May 2021. The Control Yuan later replied that members had been assigned to investigate. On August 28, the JRF Taichung Office convened an online forum entitled "Systemic Judicial and Human Rights Issues: Starting from Dummy-Account Fraud Cases"with scholars, experienced defense attorneys, and prosecutors.

People with money can be defrauded of money; people without money can be defrauded of their labor, bank accounts, or phone numbers. Fraud produces many social harms, but judicial practice also risks transforming negligence into inferred intent and thereby convicting people who were themselves deceived.

The JRF selected several strong dummy-account judgments in which prosecutors charged defendants with aiding fraud or aiding money laundering but both the first- and second-instance courts acquitted. On October 29, the JRF formally sent the judgments to local prosecutors offices, district courts, and high courts nationwide, and on November 5 it sent them to the Supreme Court. In these cases, the courts carefully examined whether defendants actually understood that they were helping a fraud ring, strictly applied the presumption of innocence, and refused to infer conditional intent merely from the proposition that an adult with ordinary social experience "should have known" that a fraud ring might use the provided account for crime.

Under the principle of prosecutorial unity, we call on chief prosecutors at local prosecutors offices to address cases in which prosecutors indict despite insufficient proof of the defendant's subjective criminal intent or fail to fulfill their duty of objectivity, needlessly consuming litigation resources.

Good judgments can drive change. We call on district courts to circulate the JRF's selected judgments and supporting materials for judges' reference.

Change creates hope. When high courts select judgments of reference value, judgments worthy of discussion, or other notable decisions, we urge them to consider the cases and analysis collected by the JRF so that courts handling similar cases can draw on methods of careful, evidence-based adjudication.