White-Collar Theft
I heard that a couple of years ago a child fell down and bumped his head at some large chain school, and then the parents demanded about 100,000 NT? or they’d throw a temper tantrum and make the school lose students. Well, it seems that Taiwan is unfortunately following in the footsteps of america in regards to legal absurdness, so the school gave the student the money.
Gangster Theft
In a far more hellish theft approach, I heard of a gangster child who was probably told to be an absolute devil-monster in class. One of the teachers finally smacked the kid or something like that, and then its gangster parents showed up with 20 or so gangsters standing outside intimidating the other students parents. The gangsters demanded, I think 200,000 NT. The school finally paid, and then found out that the gangsters had done that like 5 times to previous schools.
I then heard about patients at hospitals threatening the hospitals where they received good treatment. They said that they knew that they had insurance to cover lawsuits, and they were only interested in the insurance money.
Guns aren’t allowed in Taiwan, but are there any other suggestions that people have to protect themselves against these kinds of evil, 2 year old like, temper tantrum throwing thefts? Do the police respond? Or do they seem to be scared or corrupt in general?
“According to Taiwan’s NPA, the Bamboo Union’s members are involved in virtually every facet of illegal activity imaginable - from the standard activities of prostitution, gambling and extortion locally” atimes.com/atimes/China/GF04Ad06.html
The trouble with extortion, if you pay the money, you pay to keep the bad news out of the public eye. That means we can’t determine how much extortion is taking place in Taiwan. According to the NPA, extortion is occurring in Taiwan. I believe that the two stories in the OP are entirely plausible.