Taiwan prosecutors charge three people in international surrogacy fraud scheme
Taichung prosecutors have indicted a Chinese national and two Taiwanese accomplices for running a cross-border surrogacy operation that placed babies with Taiwanese fathers.
The Taichung District Prosecutors’ Office indicted a 34-year-old Chinese man named Cheng and two Taiwanese nationals, Hsu and Wu, for allegedly managing a transnational surrogacy ring spanning Taiwan, Malaysia and Thailand. The operation advertised services online, matched Thai egg donors and surrogate mothers with Taiwanese fathers who traveled to Malaysia to provide sperm, and then brought the pregnant surrogates to Taiwan for delivery.
Charged fees ranged from NT$2 million to NT$4.5 million per infant, resulting in 25 births for 22 Taiwanese clients. The National Immigration Agency’s Taichung Special Operations Brigade discovered that several Thai women had remained in Taiwan beyond their tourist visas after childbirth. A raid on a Taichung obstetrics clinic seized delivery records and led to the arrests, while two additional Chinese nationals, Liu, remain wanted.
Why it matters
The case highlights legal and ethical challenges of overseas surrogacy and cross-border human-trafficking concerns.
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