A central Taiwan man who previously served time for stealing over 200,000 books and selling them online was sentenced on Tuesday to four years in prison for the theft of nearly 3,000 books since his release.
The man, identified by the surname Hsiao (?), was originally arrested by Chiayi police in 2015 after being observed entering multiple area bookshops and stuffing books into a backpack.
An investigation found that Hsiao had stolen upwards of 200,000 books over an eight-year period, which he sold at low prices on internet auction websites, earning over NT$10 million (US$325,910) in illicit profits.
For these crimes, Hsiao was sentenced in 2016 to a year and a half in prison.
However, according to a verdict handed down Tuesday by the Changhua District Court, Hsiao returned to his old ways after completing his prison term in March 2018.
From October 2020 to April 2021, the verdict said, Hsiao stole nearly 3,000 books from bookstores in New Taipei, Taichung and Changhua, which he again began selling at a discount online.
In October last year, he was reported to the police for stealing beer, fruit and other items from a supermarket in Changhua's Xihu Township, according to the verdict.
Using surveillance footage, police were able to track Hsiao to his residence, where they found 725 stolen books and realized that they had stumbled onto a larger crime.
In its verdict, the court said that because Hsiao had committed theft within five years of his previous conviction, he qualified as a recidivist under the Criminal Code and was eligible for a heavier sentence.
The court sentenced him to four years imprisonment, commutable to a fine at a rate of NT$1,000 for each day of detention. The ruling can be appealed.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel