Three suspects have been detained and held incommunicado for their alleged involvement in a case that involves the illegal hacking and sale of information from elementary, junior and senior high schools in Taiwan, Tainan District Prosecutors Office said Wednesday.
In the case, as many as 7.5 million items of information were stolen and illegally sold to cram schools by a criminal ring, which earned millions of Taiwan dollars as a result, according to prosecutors.
Acting on a tip, Tainan prosecutors arrested a man surnamed Chen (?) in July for peddling the information of elementary and secondary school students using dummy cellphone accounts.
Chen was arrested and held incommunicado after being questioned by prosecutors, which led to the detention in September of three alleged accomplices -- a 47-year-old math teacher surnamed Tsai (?) who taught at a cram school, a 36-year-old hacker Chai (?) and another 27-year-old hacker identified as Chang (?).
Following an investigation, Chai and Chang were taken into custody and held incommunicado, while Tsai was released on NT$100,000 (US$3,600) bail.
Findings by prosecutors indicate that Tsai started to collude with computer-savvy Chai and Chang in 2015 to steal students' personal information by hacking school computer systems or those of local education authorities around Taiwan.
Both Chai and Chang have a record of illegally hacking websites. Chang was even indicted for doing so when at university.
Information stolen by the three was usually passed to Chen by Tsai for sale to scram schools, with Chai and Chang taking up 90 percent of the illegal gains.
Each item, containing the personal name, school name, grade, class, ID number, parents' names, home address, phone number and test scores of a student was sold for NT$10-20, according to prosecutors.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel