【Case Background】

This message describes a situation a law firm has handled numerous similar cases over the past year involving fraud perpetrated by scamming groups using the LINE messaging app. The scam involves tricking victims into buying point cards under various pretenses, such as prostitution or online dating. After the victims provide the point card passwords to the scammers, the scammers redeem the point cards through their platforms. The victims then report the incident to the police, who track down the perpetrators by tracing the IP addresses used to access the point cards.

The rationale often used by the police or prosecutors is that the defendants could foresee that providing their IP addresses and internet devices for others to use could facilitate criminal activities, such as fraud to obtain money. Despite this, they still provided their IP addresses to the members of the scamming group, who then used these details, along with other reasons, to defraud victims of point cards. The method typically employed by law enforcement agencies involves retrieving the account registration IP addresses used to deposit the point cards and tracing these back to the defendants.

【District Prosecutors Office: Non-prosecution decision】

In the investigation, our attorneys defended the accused, all of whom received decisions not to prosecute:

Criminals, aware of the need to avoid detection, often use foreign IP addresses to recharge restricted websites or use them as a stepping stone in their connection process. Considering the accused did not provide their IP address for criminal groups to use and would not easily leave an internet IP record for the police to trace. Furthermore, given the prevalence of computer hackers using malicious software like Trojans and viruses to invade computers or steal data, it cannot be ruled out that the computer network device located at the accused's IP address was hacked and used as a stepping stone.

After defrauding victims of game points, the fraud group used multiple IP addresses both domestically and internationally during the close contact period to perform recharges and deductions, indicating the accused's IP address could indeed have been used as a stepping stone by the fraud group. Thus, it's difficult to attribute guilt to the accused based solely on the IP address used for recharging game points being theirs, implicating them in the fraud.

Ultimately, in similar cases handled by our firm, the parties involved received decisions not to prosecute from the district prosecutors office, and in some cases, the parties did not need to appear in court with their attorney. After the first court appearance, through the attorney's active defense with the prosecutor, they also received a decision not to prosecute.

Therefore, when encountering similar cases, the public should discuss with their attorney the methods of investigating evidence and patiently communicate with the prosecutor about the direction of evidence investigation, to avoid the embarrassing question, "Why is it that only your IP address gets stolen?" In summary, if faced with similar issues, individuals should discuss the facts with their attorney and seek favorable directions for investigating evidence, striving for a decision not to prosecute in the investigation.
 

Reference：Chapter 32 of the Criminal Code: Crimes of Fraud, Breach of Trust, and Usury

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