How to deal with a liar/thief?

First off, I am a member and regular poster on Forumosa.

I’m using this account once, just to maintain a bit of anonymity because I have a difficult question.

There’s a guy who works for one of the foreign representative offices in Taiwan who has been borrowing money from all of his friends for an ‘emergency’. Half a year later, and hundreds of excuses later, no one has been repaid. One of the people he owes seized a bunch of hs stuff until they are repaid.

What can the rest of us do? There were no written records, so no proof of the loans. Would the police go near this?

Thanks

No. They won’t touch it with a barge pole. Best contacting his head of non-mission. How are you going to prove this?

Go ask X’s boss if he has a drug problem or some other dirty secret to support. Maybe the boss will help you put pressure on him in order to keep it from becoming a scandal. If not, you may at least have the pleasure of seeing him fired and sent home in disgrace.
OTOH you (the creditors) could get together and sell this debt to gangsters at a discount. They don’t seem to care if you have any proof or not.

I don’t think the police would go near it. You could take him to small claims court, but that would require some hassles. I would just confront him rudely and make him/her lose face in front of a crowd.

Not that it matters, but is he Taiwanese or is he a foreigner?

My wife advised me that there are people like that. The best thing to do is never loan them money again, and also make sure everyone else does the same.

She didn’t give me good advice about how to get the money back. Actually she told me to forget about the debt… But also that it is bad luck to owe money at Chinese New Year, so everyone tries to get their money back at this time of the year.

Even with paper on a loan, the “defendant” can easily twist the facts and bring in witnesses who will say anything he wants them to (depending on his interpersonal skills, of course)…I have paper on a debtor in Taiwan but will have to drop the case because he has actually brought in witnesses to say that they discussed the loan with me and it was clearly a gift because his mother had cancer, and here are the doctor’s certificates, blah blah blah…if I didn’t have a trusted friend who had been through it all with me, I’d be believing the little twerp myself at this point.

It is not difficult to sue someone in small claims court here, though, if you feel that might light a fire underneath his sorry butt. Depends on the psychology. If it’s another foreigner, it depends on his connections and what strings he’s willing to pull. In my case, the “accused” is showing up in court with random nuns from Tainan (he lives in Taipei) to “prove” his case. And he seems to be getting away with it, mostly because I’m not in Taiwan anymore.

Moral of the story: never loan anyone money in Taiwan unless you’re prepared to lose it, no matter how needy or how sincere the recipient seems to be. I don’t care about the money so much (although it would be very handy just about now, since I’m buying a house in the US) but I am sick of being lied about, and the “accused” also lied about my then-boss. While my then-boss has done his share of shenanigans over the years, in that particular case he was honest and lily-white, which really pissed HIM off too. I should have taken him up on the offer to rough the guy up.

(So I guess now I should say, PM me if you want the name of my ex-boss, who might be willing to rough the guy up for you?? :smiley: ) Just joking…I think… :fume:

How much is the money owed to you, and how much is the money owed collectively between all the lenders?

It may well be worth you grouping together to go to small claims rather then doing it yourself as more evidence means more pressure and more chance of a result.

From what I can gather, you offered to lend him money. There was no agreed time limit for the loan, making it technically indefinate. It would be difficult to prove any intent on the borrowers part to keep the money at the time that it was lent to him.

Police in other countries might try to prove any intent to keep the money, but in Taiwan and based on the law that I can interpret, the Police here wont touch it.

Your best bet is civil action or violent action. (Not that I would suggest anything like violent action). :smiley:

longshot to begin with if he doesn’t care about his rep or have assets, but nothing written? kiss it goodbye, you may as well head to the local temple to ask what they think as go to the police

neither a lender… damn, how does the end of that go? well spoken and thrice so over here

I usually think of lending money to people I don’t like as getting off cheap.

Think about it this way. He