PHNOM PENH, Feb 16, 2024 (AFP) – Two Taiwanese men have been sentenced to two years in jail each after they staged a fake kidnapping from a Cambodian seaside resort and posted video of it online, a court said on Friday.
Chen Neng-chuan, 31, and Lu Tsu-hsien, 34, were arrested after they posted a video of themselves being detained and beaten up by security guards at a building in Sihanoukville on Facebook earlier this week, Preah Sihanouk provincial court said in a statement.
“Both men had entered Cambodia to produce slanderous videos related to human trafficking, detention with torture, rape and selling human organs,” the court said.
The court found them guilty on charges of “incitement to cause chaos to social security” at a trial on Thursday, it said.
It sentenced them to two years in jail each and ordered them to pay a combined fine of about $2,000, the statement added.
The provincial government said the men produced videos with “fake content that affects the honour, order, and security” of the province.
Extensive reporting by AFP and other media has documented thousands of people — most Chinese, but some from Taiwan and other countries — lured to centres to operate online scams fleecing victims for large sums.
Taiwan’s Central News Agency (CNA) said one of the men live-streamed a video on Monday night in which he claimed to have broken into a “scam park”.
In the video, it appears he is chased and beaten up by unseen attackers, while a second video shows him claiming to have escaped.
In the second video he shows injuries and describes being robbed, tied up, beaten and assaulted with a stun gun, CNA said.
In August, the United Nations warned that hundreds of thousands of people are being coerced in Southeast Asia by criminal gangs into carrying out online scams, often under the threat of torture.
Many have been trafficked into working in online criminality and face serious violations such as torture or sexual violence, the UN said in a report.
